


The Off Prospect

by wreckingthefinite



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Beefy Bucky, Belly Kink, Ensemble Cast, Eventual Sex, F/F, Food Kink, Friends to Lovers, Gay Bar, M/M, Mob Boss Bucky Barnes, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slow Burn, Stuffing, Weight Gain, the 1940s gayborhood fic we all deserve
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:27:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14098224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckingthefinite/pseuds/wreckingthefinite
Summary: Peggy tends the (gay) bar, Natasha sings the blues, and Bucky runs the neighborhood for the Irish mob.  Oh, and Steve scowls and pines a lot.  Adventures happen!  It's like Cheers, only gayer.  And 1940s-er.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started out as a collaboration with my lovely former writing partner, SevereStorms. She's no longer active in the fandom, and this little gem has been languishing on my desktop for a year. After a lot of encouragement from the dumpster crew, I decided it was time for it to see the light of day! The first few chapters were co-written, but the rest are completely my fault. I'll be updating weekly, and I hope y'all love the idea of gangster!Bucky as much as I do. (Because I really do.)

_Prologue_

The night before Bucky ships out doesn't feel real to Steve, not in any way that matters. It doesn't feel real that his best friend will be leaving the next morning for a war zone half a world away, and it doesn't feel real that he might die there, without ever seeing Steve again. It doesn't feel real that Bucky will finally be going somewhere that Steve can't follow.

It is so surreal that Steve wants to vomit. 

Except, of course, that it's because of that very unreality that none of their usual rules apply.

When they go to the bar for drinks like it's just a normal night—except that it's not normal, not at all, and nothing will ever be normal again—it doesn't seem real.

When Bucky takes Steve's hand and pulls him out on the dance floor, it doesn't seem real.

When the crowd cheers for them, when there are catcalls from sailors in their pressed blues and the pretty boys on their arms, when there are wolf whistles from women in suits and dames dressed to the nines and beauty queens with very, very large hands, it doesn't seem real.

And when Steve wakes up the next morning, tangled up with Bucky so tightly that it's hard to tell where Steve ends and Bucky begins, it still doesn't feel real.

Which is why Steve makes himself memorize every second of it, every beautiful moment of his body shoved up underneath Bucky's, of their mouths and hands and cocks and spit and love all melded together. 

"Don't do anything stupid 'til I get back," Bucky says when he kisses Steve that morning, and Steve imagines it means _I love you_.

"How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you,” Steve says back, and he means _please don't die, Bucky, come back to me, please_.

And he does come back—but it's not what Steve thought it would be.

Nothing ever is.

*

_1946, Brooklyn Heights_

The problem with coming home from the war is that nothing seems to fit anymore. Bucky doesn’t know how to be the person he was—the kid at the bar, kissing Steve on a table, sleeping with half the neighborhood, laughing and drinking, free in all the ways that had mattered—and it’s no longer appropriate to be the person the military taught him to be. 

Every moment that he’d spent down in the muck in Europe, leaned over the scope of his rifle, picking off Germans with a deadly, detached efficiency, he’d dreamed of Brooklyn. Of Steve, of the neighborhood, of the way their favorite bars had felt like little universes all on their own, where he and his friends were constellations, beautiful and safe in those spaces. 

And now that he’s here, Bucky can’t seem to make himself go back and be the person that he was. 

He tries to go see Steve. Shows up at his apartment at 3:00 AM, the night he gets back. Still in uniform, drunk as a lord and pounding on the door. 

Steve sobs, and it’s the first time Bucky has really seen him cry. Even when his ma died, it had been a few tears, red eyes and a twitchy jaw, nothing like the outpouring of sorrow and relief that Steve unleashes when he walks through the door, wrapping his skinny arms around Bucky and just hanging on. 

It feels good, and it feels like too much. Bucky doesn’t know what to do with it. 

He thinks, maybe, that they can slip back into their old friendship. He thinks that maybe, when Bucky doesn’t feel too big for his skin, when he doesn’t wake up screaming, when it doesn’t make him feel twitchy and anxious to be touched, they can fool around again. He could be Steve’s fella, and Steve could be his, and things will just fall into place. 

It doesn’t happen. 

Steve watches him like a cat at a mouse hole, pretty blue eyes focused on him like lasers, and Bucky can’t help feeling like he’s letting him down all the time. Every time he drinks too much—which is more often than not. Every time he loses another job—which happens far too frequently for any possible explanation except that Bucky no longer takes well to the yoke of regular employment. Every time Steve lays a casual hand on his arm and Bucky has him pinned to the wall, hand on his throat and a hare’s breath away from snapping his neck, before he can tell himself it’s just Steve, just his friend, just _Steve_. Every time he can’t be the person Steve wants him to be.

Then Bucky thinks that, maybe, things will get better when he finally gets a job he can keep, one that doesn’t make him itch to lash out whenever his boss tells him what to do. It starts easy, running numbers for the Irish bookmakers that operate in the neighborhood. It’s not hard work, and it pays better than the docks or the factories. And he _likes_ it, likes the easy camaraderie of the men he’s surrounded with, likes that he can spend an afternoon moving from bar to bar, picking up the numbers for the day, without having anyone breathing down his neck, telling him what to do. 

He likes that, if he feels like it, he can drink too much, maybe get in a fight and bloody his knuckles a little in an alley, and not only does no one care, his boss actually encourages it. _Sends the right message_ , he tells Bucky one day when Bucky shows up with the day’s tallies and a busted lip, bruised knuckles. 

Steve hates all of it.

*

The straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back of Steve’s tolerance is the night that Bucky comes home battered and happy, nose crooked from a punch, one eye already swelling shut. Steve is horrified, hands fluttering over Bucky like anxious birds, and Bucky crows happy laughter, telling him he’d won in a prize fight, jumped in the ring after an impromptu dare from one of the other guys in the crew. 

“Is’ good news, sweetheart. Got a promotion,” Bucky tells Steve, slurring the words a little over his fat lip. “No more running numbers. Gonna work directly for Frankie now.” 

Frankie Muldoon runs all of their neighborhood and most of the surrounding ones, and he has a reputation for violence that is as unsavory as it is well-deserved. Steve recoils the moment the name escapes Bucky’s lips. “Doing what?” he asks, looking at Bucky like he’s a stranger. “Beating up men who can’t pay their gambling debts? Shaking down store owners?” He looks disgusted. “Your ma would roll over in her grave, she heard this stuff.”

Bucky just shrugs, and if Steve had thought he could change Bucky’s mind, he’s wrong. “Leave ma out of it,” he says softly. “She was here, I’d buy her a new dress for church and take her there myself—but she ain’t, so leave it alone.”

He moves out three weeks later.

*

_1947_

When they were kids, Bucky used to laugh and tell Steve that no one could hold a grudge quite like he could. And it’s true. It had been true when they were kids and it is still true now. Once Steve Rogers decides that someone’s wronged him, forgiveness is not his strong suit. 

And that’s what it’s like now, how Steve feels about Bucky. Like he can’t ever forgive him. Every time he sees Bucky in the street, hair long and combed back, dressed sharp in wool trousers and suspenders, everything about him a little too slick, a little too predatory, he’s angry all over again. Angry that Bucky chose this life instead of the one Steve had imagined for them. Angry that the Bucky Steve knew as a kid—the Bucky who had found a litter of kittens under the steps of his apartment building and would tuck them under his shirt and sneak them into his bedroom at night, the Bucky who had bloodied a kid’s nose for tossing firecrackers at a stray dog, the Bucky who had once spent an entire night at the dance hall cracking jokes to a girl with a stutter so painful she could barely speak, making her laugh and carrying the whole conversation, so that all she had to do was smile and hold his hand—is gone, replaced by a smooth-talking gangster who seems not just prone to violence but proud of it, swaggering through the streets like he owns them, powerful and frightening. 

The Bucky Steve knew is gone, but, to Steve’s extreme displeasure, he still dreams about him. Mostly, he dreams about the one night they’d had together before the war—except it's even more pathetic than that, really, because his dreams aren't even of the actual night, most of the time. His dreams are of the next morning, of waking up with the boy Bucky had been before the war had stolen all the best parts of him, changed them utterly. He dreams of Bucky’s tousled hair, his eyes still puffy with sleep, a crease on the side of his face where it had pressed into the pillowcase. He dreams of the way Bucky had slipped an arm under Steve’s body, pulled him closer and kissed him, his mouth soft and lush and sweet, undemanding. Steve thinks about this kiss as often as he thinks about that first, fateful one, the one at the bar the night before, the one that had sent him tumbling hopelessly into a hellish kind of love, a love unasked for and unwanted, unnecessary, inconvenient, and irresistible. 

Those two kisses bracket the entirety of his sexual experience. 

Bucky’s gone, still, even though the war is over. Sometimes, on the rare occasions that Steve gets drunk, he thinks that it would have been easier if Bucky had died in Europe. He could have grieved for him, spent the rest of his life polishing old memories and imagining what would have been, had Bucky come home to him. Instead, Bucky had returned a different person, and Steve can’t mourn for a man he sees regularly in the neighborhood. It is, Steve thinks, rather like being haunted. 

Life without Bucky looks like this: Steve buys the apartment upstairs when old Mrs. Curran goes to live with her son in Jersey City. It’s a tiny place, just two ratty rooms, but the light is good, and he turns it into a studio. He still lives in the apartment his mother and father had bought back in ’16, but he works upstairs all day, every day, slogging through illustrations and posters, eking out a living with pencil and ink. It’s too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, but it’s adequate, and it’s all his. 

Most evenings, he heads to a bar called the Off Prospect. He still doesn’t drink much, but they serve food at happy hour, and he’s grown close to Peggy, who tends the bar. That’s where he’s heading tonight, as soon as he finishes inking an illustration for a science fiction magazine and realizes he’s eaten nothing since breakfast. It’s already getting dark outside. 

He stops in his apartment to change, slipping out of the oversized shirt he’s wearing. It’s one of Bucky’s, a faded chambray work shirt that he had left behind when he’d headed off to war. Steve wears the work shirt all the time, no matter how much it pains him to do it. Mourning for a man who lives a few blocks away. 

*

He hasn’t spoken to anyone about Bucky, not really, but he might’ve mentioned him to Peggy once or twice on nights when he’d had a drink or two. So it’s not really a surprise when she asks, “Didn’t you say you knew a man named Bucky Barnes?” as she tops up his tonic water later that evening. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I knew him.” He places a slight emphasis on the past tense of the word. “How come?” 

Peggy’s large, dark eyes slide sideways, toward the end of the bar. “He came in earlier.” 

Steve jerks his head up. “Why?” 

Since Bucky took up with the Irish crew, he hasn’t gone into any of the bars he and Steve had used to frequent, before the war. Steve has wondered, over and over, if he’s given it up—being queer. As if it’s something you could just set aside. 

“He’s our new landlord,” Peggy says, giving Steve a long look over the glass of beer she’s pouring. 

Steve coughs, spluttering over his drink for a moment. “Landlord?”

Peggy shrugs. “You know the Irish own all these bars, darling. It’s quite the racket for them—collect the rent, plus a little more to keep the police away from the door, plus a little more on top of that, just because of what we are.”

“Bucky is your landlord,” Steve says, feeling a little sick to his stomach. 

“He is now,” Peggy says.

“I – I don’t know him anymore. Not since before the war.” 

“Of course. It changes people. Well.” She clears her throat and smiles, changing the subject. “You know, we’ve had a few customers ask about our artwork,” she says, nodding at the mural on the far wall. “I’ve been sending people your way.” 

“Oh. Jeez,” Steve says, brain still whirling to try to catch up, still stuck on the idea that Bucky had been here. “I didn’t mean—you don’t have to do that. I was just trying to help you guys out. It’s nothing, really.” 

“You could’ve charged us thousands,” Peggy says. “It’s beautiful. Picadilly circus, just like I described it to you. It’s like looking at a dream, whenever I have a moment to look up. Everyone loves it. It’s far from nothing, you have a tremendous talent. Which is why,” she adds, pushing the few dollar bills he’s placed on the bar back toward him, “your money’s no good here. As you know.” 

Steve never knows what to do with compliments, but he’s found that trying to escape them only makes them continue, so he takes it on the chin. “Thanks, Peggy, You’re the best.” 

“Tell Angie that,” Peggy says, rolling her eyes. “She’s angry with me.” 

“Why, what’d you do?” Steve asks, dodging a swat from Peggy’s bar towel. 

“What did _I_ do? You’re as bad as she is, I swear. She’s the one who said we needed to liven things up around here. So I hired a band.” 

“A band,” Steve says neutrally, studying Peggy’s deliberately innocent expression. “Hard to see why that would be a problem.” 

“Exactly what I said,” Peggy says, with satisfaction. “You can tell her how silly she’s being.” 

Angie pops her head around the corner of the kitchen and shoots Peggy a dark look before smiling and waving at Steve. “Heya Stevie. Ask her about her new pet torch singer. The redhead. From _Russia._ ” She spits out the country’s name as if this is the single factor that pushes the whole issue beyond the pale. 

“Torch singer?” Steve asks, eyebrows lifting. 

“It’s hardly a band without a singer,” Peggy says. “And she can’t help what she looks like.” 

Angie makes a noise of disgust and disappears back into the kitchen. 

“See what I mean?” Peggy says, shaking her head. “Remind me why I allowed myself to fall in love with such an unreasonable woman. Honestly.” She glances over Steve’s shoulder and her face lights up. “Isn’t that your friend?” she asks, and because she’d just mentioned Bucky, Steve’s heart does a few cartwheels as he turns around, but it’s not Bucky, of course. Bucky’s not Steve’s friend, not anymore. He’s Peggy’s landlord. 

“Hey, sugar,” Sam Wilson says, leaning over the bar to plant a kiss on Peggy’s upturned cheek. “How’s that gal of yours?” 

“Angry,” Peggy says, drawing another beer without having to ask and setting it down in front of Sam. “How’s the VBA?” 

“Depressing and uplifting in equal measure,” Sam says, pulling up a seat beside Steve. “You should come some time.” 

“I’m not a veteran in need of benevolence,” Peggy says. 

“More of a social thing, most days,” Sam says. “There’s legal advice and do-gooders like me, but we have dances and stuff, too, it’s not all work and no play. You’d love it. Tell’er, Stevie.” 

“I didn’t know you’d been going to VBA meetings,” Peggy says. 

Steve stares into his tonic water. “Yeah, well,” he says. “Feels like I should do something, some way,” he says. “Since I couldn’t serve.” 

“He’s been great,” Sam adds, patting him lightly on the shoulder. “He’s been doing these incredible portraits of some of the vets. They all love talking to him.” 

“I’m not really doing anything useful,” Steve objects. “Just listening.” 

“Why, Steve Rogers,” Peggy says. “I’d never have suspected you could be so obtuse. After all the times I’ve been here for you—for _everyone_ —are you really saying you think listening isn’t that helpful?” 

“Well…no, I just meant…I don’t know what I meant,” he says. “Sorry, Peggy, you’re right. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. You’re wonderful. I guess I just don’t see myself in the same light, is all.” 

Peggy and Sam share a knowing look, and Peggy sighs, tossing her bar towel over her shoulder. “Well, you’ll have to listen to each other, looks like I’ve got a busy night ahead of me,” and she nods toward the door. 

*

Bucky doesn’t, strictly speaking, have to go into the bars he runs all that often. Mostly he could just swing past once a month to collect the rent and his cut of the profits, make sure everyone working understood that he and his crew were not to be trifled with, that paying them for the pleasure of operating their little bar is a much more pleasant arrangement than trying to operate without such benevolent sanction.

But, for reasons that Bucky isn’t quite ready to consider, he finds himself in them more often than that. He misses them, the camaraderie of those places, where the boys might be pretty, might paint their faces and hitch up their stockings when they stood up to dance, where the girls might be tough, might wear jackets and ties and cut their hair short and beat him at poker. 

He misses Steve.

He misses the way life was before the war, even if he doesn’t know how to be the person he had been, then. 

The first time he walks into the Off Prospect and sees Steve sitting at the bar, nursing a tonic water and futzing around in his notebook, pencil scratching away, probably sketching the knockout with the red lipstick behind the bar, probably detailing the way her feisty girlfriend’s hand, slung over her shoulders, is slipping down the neckline of her blouse, his heart nearly stops. 

And then, when he hears Steve’s rattling cough, watches his thin shoulders shake with it, his heart _does_ stop, just for a moment. 

He wants to go sit down on the stool next to him, pull the wad of cash out of his pocket and tell him to go to a better doctor, get better medicine. 

He wants to tell him he misses him.

He wants to tell him he doesn’t know how to be the person Steve remembers. 

But he can’t, so he just saunters around the edge of the bar, like he owns the place—because he does—and pours himself a beer, tipping Steve a little salute as he does. 

Steve looks like he’s been punched, and Bucky drains the beer in one long go. 


	2. Chapter 2

Angie Martinelli knows she’s lucky; any time she forgets it, all she has to do is look at Peggy and she knows it all over again. 

She looks at her now, topping off a beer and handing it to their new landlord. He’s a big guy in a sharp suit, too handsome to be trustworthy, too big to be anything but ambitious mob muscle. Peggy always seems larger than life to Angie, but next to Barnes, she looks small and almost fragile. 

Which is a laugh. Peggy is a lot of things, but fragile isn’t one of them. 

They’d met at the automat where Angie’d been working the year before, back when she’d had to wear a dress and throw on a bucket of face paint every day to scrape a few tips out of the stingy customers. She’d hated it, all of it, from the skirt to the pointy brassiere to the lipstick, felt like she was wearing a disguise. 

Still, it must’ve been convincing, because one of the male customers had grabbed a handful of her ass and squeezed, hard, after griping about his food. He’d probably figured her for a patsy, thought she was a _real_ girl, a normal girl, one that would smack his hand playfully and giggle, let him get away with it. 

It was probably the last time he’d ever make a mistake like that. Angie had whirled around and coldcocked him, right there in front of god and everybody. It had turned out to be the wrong move, because the guy had staggered but shaken it off, gotten hold of her by the stupid bow of her stupid uniform, ready to give back as good as he’d gotten, or better. 

Then, all of a sudden, he’d turned in response to a cool tap on his shoulder. It was the smoldering brunette who came in for dinner most nights, the one who always left a hefty tip and dirty thoughts lingering behind her like perfume. As soon as the man turned, she leveled a stunning smile at his face and a mean right jab to his midsection, and he’d dropped back into his seat, gasping and red-faced. 

It hadn’t been much of a surprise that Angie had been fired on the spot; the only surprise was that she’d lasted as long as she had. 

Which was how she’d ended up standing on the sidewalk outside the L&L, temper still boiling after a brutal dressing-down from her manager. She’d leaned up against the plate glass with a cigarette, but her goddamn lighter had been in her goddamn purse, a fancy little faux-alligator job she’d borrowed from her grandmother as part of the whole stupid drag. It was impossible to find anything in there, and she’d been rifling through the frippy thing when someone struck a match right in front of her face. 

“You handled that well,” said an impossibly cool, thrillingly accented voice. “I suppose they’ve let you go?” 

“You’re fuckin-a right they let me go,” she’d said, leaning over the flame to light her smoke. 

“Their loss.” The woman—and what a woman, a straight-up, honest-to-god femme fatale, red lips and Victory curls and 36-24-36 if she was an inch—lit her own cigarette off the match before dropping it to the sidewalk and toeing it out beneath the sole of her dainty shoe. “I’m Peggy,” she’d said, extending her hand. 

“Angie. Pleased to meet you.” They shook. 

“Likewise.” Smoke coiled from her full, red mouth. Gorgeous. “The reason I’m asking,” Peggy went on, “is that I run a little bar, right up the street. You might’ve heard of it, although I don’t think I’ve seen you there. The Off Prospect?” 

“Heard of it.” 

“As it happens, we’re a trifle short-staffed at the moment.” The lips had pursed, and Angie hadn’t been able to keep herself from staring. “I thought you might fit the bill.” 

“Fit what bill?” Angie had asked, warily. 

“We need a person who can tend bar, wait a few tables, help out in the kitchen, and keep her mouth shut. A sort of Jack-of-all-trades.” Then, with a slow smile, "Or Jill-of-all-trades, as the case may be.” 

“What’s it pay?” Angie hadn’t wanted to sound too eager, but she’d been barely scraping by on her miserable salary at the automat, and even a day out of work would be too long. 

“I pay forty dollars per week, cash in hand.” Which meant she’d be paid under the table, which meant the money was as good as tax-free. 

“What’s the catch?” 

“There isn’t one,” Peggy had said. “Or at least, there isn’t one that you probably haven’t figured out already. The Off Prospect is a special establishment that caters to a very specific clientele. You know the sort.” 

Angie had known, and she’d only had to think about it for a minute, tops. “I’m game,” she’d said. “As long as I can wear what I want.” 

The well-groomed eyebrows had risen, and Peggy had looked Angie up and down, taking in her skinny legs, square shoulders, and scraped knuckles. “Wear whatever you’d like,” she’d said. “I’ll expect you at six.” 

Angie had headed out at 5:30 that evening, wearing a pair of boy’s trousers, an old work shirt, and suspenders, her hair tucked up under one of her brother’s wool caps. She hadn’t worn a stitch of makeup, and she’d seldom felt happier in her life than she had when she’d walked into the Off Prospect for the first time and seen Peggy behind the bar, the staid skirt suit she’d been wearing earlier swapped for an elegant black pantsuit. She was pulling it off better than Marlene Dietrich in _Morocco,_ and if Angie hadn’t already fallen in love with her outside the L &L, she would have done so right then. 

Now, Angie leans belligerently on the bar, watching Peggy draw another beer for Barnes. He looks like the ass-grabbing type, he really does, and also like the type who gets away with it. He’s too good-looking by half, and Angie quells a familiar surge of envy as she takes in his broad shoulders and wide chest. She hasn’t socked anyone for over a year, and frankly, this does not seem like the right person to practice on. Still, if he lays a hand on Peggy, he’s getting a shot in the eye, no two ways about it. 

He drains the second beer almost as quickly as he had the first, then sets the glass down on the bar. “You hire a band, like I asked?” 

“Certainly,” Peggy says, cutting a quick glance at Angie. “They’ll be here Friday night.” 

“I’m gonna get a poker game in here on Sundays,” he says. His eyes are some color that isn’t quite gray and isn’t quite blue, and his lashes are long. They make his eyes look deceptively soft. “There a back room?” 

“There’s my office,” Peggy says, and if you didn’t know her, you might miss the little flash of irritation. “And the kitchen.” 

“Your office’ll be fine,” Barnes says. Then—had he caught that look after all?—"That a problem?” 

“Not at all.” Peggy’s face is smooth as glass. “I’ll have it ready for you on Sunday. How many?” 

“Not more than six.” 

“Very well.” 

“Good.” He looks around the bar, taking in the scene a little longer. “This is a good place,” he says. “I think we’re gonna do good work here. Have a good night, ladies. Steve.” He taps his forehead in a mocking little salute, then heads toward the door, taking his time, swaggering in a way that ought to be more annoying than it is. 

“Jiminy Christmas,” Angie breathes as the doors swing shut behind him. “You were friends with him, Stevie?” 

But Steve doesn’t answer. He just sits there, pencil poised above his notepad, gazing at Barnes’ retreating form like he’s getting bad news from God. 

*

It hurts, seeing Bucky again. Hurts more, knowing that Bucky had been right: the Off Prospect _is_ a good place, one of the few good places around since LaGuardia started really cracking down. But Steve isn’t sure it’s going to stay good, with Bucky in charge.

He packs up his notebook, bids Peggy good night, and heads for home, staring at his feet, thinking about Bucky and wishing he could stop. Wishing Bucky hadn’t looked so damn _good._ Steve’s body remembers, all too clearly, the feel of Bucky’s strong, slender body against his, the narrow hips, the wiry muscles of his arms and the strength of his slim thighs when he’d roll on top of Steve and kiss him breathless. 

He’d feel different now, for sure. Steve sees the world with an artist’s eye for lines, and the lines of Bucky’s body had been different tonight. Curving where they’d once been straight, round with muscle where they’d been lean. What would it feel like to be pinned beneath this new, bigger, stronger Bucky? This Bucky who’s heavier, thicker, so much bigger, so sure of himself and his place in the world? 

_Don’t think about it,_ he tells himself. _I don’t know him anymore._ Bucky’s knuckles had been calloused and scabbed. He had a tiny white scar underneath his left eye. He’d frightened Peggy. 

His reverie is broken by the sound of heavy footsteps coming up behind him. 

“Hey faggot,” a man’s voice hisses in his ear. “Hey, fairy boy.” 

Steve keeps his head down and keeps moving. More footsteps, more laughing voices. “You like dick? Wanna suck mine?” Another man asks, to a chorus of jeers. 

“Talking to you, queer,” the first man says, grabbing Steve’s arm and slinging him up against the side of a brick row house. “Don’t you fucking ignore me.” 

As soon as he hits the wall, Steve’s breath is gone, knocked clean out of his lungs, and he chokes, gasping uselessly, doubling over. 

“This little faggot thinks he can ignore us,” the man says, and the other voices chime in, more hands grab Steve, dragging him upright. 

“C-c-can’t,” he manages to choke out, but the men just laugh. Steve closes his eyes, trying to calm down, let the air come back and reinflate his flattened lungs. His eyes water, stinging and hot, and his head starts to swim, but finally—finally—he manages a thin, shaking breath. It’s not enough. He tries to drag in more air, but his chest is too heavy to move. 

He opens his eyes again, and sees the men pelting down the street, scattering into the darkness beyond the nearest streetlight. He’s so startled, he manages another ragged breath, but his vision is going dark around the edges, closing in like the end of a scene at the movies. His knees buckle. 

And a strong arm catches him around the shoulders. “Easy, pal. I got you.” 

“No,” Steve manages to say, right before he passes out. 

*

When he wakes up, he’s in bed. Alone. 

There’s $300 in cash on the nightstand, and a business card, tattered around the edges. On the front, in simple block type, the card reads _Abraham Erskine, M.D. Respiratory Specialist._ When he flips it over, he sees a single word in a familiar scrawl. 

_GO._

*

Natasha has been singing in the Off Prospect for two weeks, and so far she thinks it’s mostly like every other queer bar she’s played in—and she’s played in a lot. There’s the scarred tables, where you can drink and sing and laugh, and the shadowy booths, where you can, maybe, do the things you can’t do anywhere else. There’s the weirdly democratic mix of clientele. The young ones who can’t hold back raucous laughter, who want to dance and drink and stay young forever. The older ones, the quieter ones, who want to get a beer or two, nod along to a song, maybe dance once or twice, if they’re feeling festive. There are the poor ones, and the very poor ones, and the slightly less poor ones who have ventured into the neighborhood specifically to find a place like the Off Prospect. The only thing that unites all of them is that their shoulders lift when they walk through the door. _Safe, we are safe_ , their bodies say with every step, every gesture, every easy smile. 

The staff, too, are just as easily recognizable. There’s the tough-talking, swaggering gal with her nose in everything, and her knockout of a girlfriend behind the bar. There’s Peter, the kid whose sole job it is to wipe down the counters and who can’t be more than fifteen, baby-faced and so sweetly innocent that Natasha had caught him trapping a spider under a glass and releasing it onto the sidewalk instead of killing it. Tough broads and a sweet kid, a found family of misfits. They remind her of other bars in other places, and she likes them instantly for their familiarity. 

And there’s Barnes, of course, the slick, barrel-chested, mobbed-up owner, a mick on the make if Natasha’s ever seen one. Natasha’s only just met him tonight, right before her set, but he’s just as familiar to her as everyone else in the Off Prospect. The only difference is that he’s less trustworthy. 

When Natasha is onstage with the band, she gives herself over to the crowd and becomes the person they want her to be—for that set, she belongs to them, and she gives them what they want. A mournful, crooning baby girl one night, a quick-talking bombshell the next. Tonight, the crowd wants her sexy, wants to whistle and play along. They want to whoop and holler for her to show a little leg, to wink at the tough girls in the front row—and she does. But when her set is finished and she disappears into Peggy’s office, she changes out of her slinky dress and into a pair of high-waisted khakis and an oxford, the sleeves rolled up, and she pins her red curls back into a little bun, messy and high. The only concession to the overstated, slinky sexuality of her stage persona are the slim silver bracelets at her wrists and the clusters of paste diamonds at her ears, which she doesn’t bother to remove. Off-stage, Natasha belongs solely to herself. 

At the bar, Natasha lets Peggy pour her a beer and lets Angie scowl at her. It’s strangely comfortable, Angie’s glaring and Peggy’s obstinate smile. It’s obvious they’re well-matched, and Natasha doesn’t think for a second that Angie’s really threatened by her presence. It’s a well-choreographed dance between the two of them: a heavy sigh from Angie, an indignant toss of hair from Peggy, a crackle of tension that seems more like teasing than hurt feelings. Natasha would lay odds, three to one, that they’ll be kissing behind the bar before the evening’s out. 

It’s a bit of a disappointment, when the owner swaggers up to the bar and the girls’ demeanor subtly changes, their faces shuttering just a little. They don’t necessarily trust their boss any more than Natasha does, she can tell. He’s intimidating, all shoulders and chest, dapper even though his vest is a half an inch too tight around his thick waist, the buttons straining over the slight curve of his middle. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, revealing a few rough-looking tattoos on his muscular forearms. If he were twenty pounds lighter, Natasha would take him for a prizefighter, the way the slight threat of violence emanates from him like low-grade static. His muscles are a little too broad for that, though, a little too padded—he's built for knocking someone senseless in an alley, slow and brutal, instead of sharp jabs in a ring. 

He slides behind the bar, and Natasha notes the way Peggy’s body stiffens ever-so-slightly as he moves behind her and pours himself a beer. “You’re a knockout,” he says out of nowhere, his steely eyes suddenly on Natasha, flashing her a grin that makes him look boyish despite his hulking frame. 

“You mean I’m an excellent singer?” she asks, lifting her chin a little. 

His grin widens, like he thinks her sass is just part of her charm. “That too, honey, and that accent. People are gonna eat that with a spoon,” he says easily. 

Natasha knows that American men—and sometimes women—like her accent, like the burred Rs and thick vowels. They want to dress her up in sables, get drunk and ask her leading questions about the Bolsheviks. Usually they’re a little less direct about it than Barnes, though. 

“I’ll lay eet on very heavy,” she says, widening her lips and letting the English words stick a little in her throat, as if she hadn’t been speaking the language half her life. “Like dat, yes?”

She means to be a smartass, and she knows Barnes knows it, but he just grins at her. “Just like that, honey.”

_Asshole._

She’s on her second beer when the tiny little blond shows up, sketchbook tucked under his elbow. The moment he sees Barnes, he marches right up to the bar, pulling a wad of bills out of his pocket. 

“I don’t need your goddamned money, Buck.”

Huh. Apparently Natasha’s not the only one who thinks he’s an asshole. 

*

Bucky cocks his head to the side, considering. People don’t really disagree with him, as a rule, but Steve, bless his heart, looks like he could spit nails and would argue vociferously that the sky was red, if Bucky had the audacity to claim it was blue. 

Bucky can’t quite decide if he’s irritated or charmed. Probably both. 

“Come on,” he says, reaching out and grabbing Steve by the arm. He feels tiny under Bucky’s grip, something beyond lean and perilously close to frail. God-fucking-damn-it. 

Steve immediately resists, pulling his arm back and clinging obstinately to his barstool, and Bucky considers his options. His instinct is to simply lift Steve up off the stool and _move_ him; he’s not used to impediments, and generally his MO when faced with them is brute force. 

Steve’s eyes are snapping, though, and Bucky forces himself to take a breath. “Come here, pal,” he mutters, making it seem like a suggestion even if his hand is still wrapped around Steve’s arm like a vice. 

Steve glares up at him, but he slides off the stool, and Bucky marches him back toward Peggy’s office. One part of his brain is distantly aware of Peggy mumbling about how Bucky should just make himself right at home, which is funny; he’s only been coming around regularly for a few weeks, but she sure has gotten accustomed to him quick. Mouth on her is rivaled only by the one on her firecracker of a girlfriend, who looks like she’s itching for a fight and mad she’s not big enough to start one with everyone she meets. 

The other part of his brain—the larger part—is completely occupied with the way that Steve’s bony shoulder feels as it brushes into Bucky’s side as they walk. 

Peggy’s office is cramped. There’s a little desk in one corner, a few battered file cabinets, and a scarred-up table where Bucky’s going to launch his inaugural poker game in a couple of days. There’s plenty of room for this conversation, though, and Bucky hauls Steve inside, shuts the door behind them, and leans back against Peggy’s desk. “I got plenty of money, Steve. Just use it. You sound like you’re about to cough up a lung, pal.”

Steve doesn’t sit down at the table, doesn’t do anything except stand there, spoiling for a fight. Bucky’s half-surprised Steve isn’t cocking his fists. “I don’t need your help.”

“You sure needed it the other night.” It’s the wrong thing to say; it was never a good idea to remind Steve of a weakness, particularly one that he thought was related to his size or his strength. 

Steve’s eyes darken, clouds gathering over the pretty blue sky of them, and when he opens his mouth again, his voice is a hiss. “Then I don’t want your blood money.” Emphasis on the word blood, in case Bucky is too stupid to get it. 

Bucky is not and has never been stupid. He gets it real loud and clear—Steve would rather die, gasping through his final asthma attack in some back alley, than let Bucky and his ill-gotten money help him. 

_Asshole._

*

When Steve gets to the Off Prospect on Sunday, the door to Peggy’s office is ajar, and Steve can see the poker game that’s in progress. Four men sit at the shoddy little table, cigarette smoke hanging stale and heavy over them, and Bucky’s leaned back on Peggy’s desk, all of her things shoved over to one side. She probably hates him for it, not that Bucky would care. 

“Wasn’t sure you’d be back in here after Friday,” Peggy says gently, refilling his tonic water and eyeballing him over the bar. Her brown eyes are soft, a little concerned, and Steve sighs, biting back the sharp retort had been bubbling up in his throat. 

“I wasn’t,” he says honestly. “I just ended up here anyway. Can’t stay away, I guess. Wanted to come visit my best girl,” he adds, giving her a grin. 

Peggy gives it right back, warming to the endearment, but then grows serious. “Well since you’re here, maybe you ought to rethink letting Bucky give you that money,” she says, her voice firm, like she knows he’s going to fight her. “I heard you coughing, Steve. We all do. Take it. Let him help.”

Steve opens his mouth to protest, ready to recite his absurdly long list of reasons why he doesn’t want or need Bucky’s money, when Bucky himself pops out of Peggy’s office, as if her mention of his money had summoned him. 

“Hey, Stevie,” he says, strolling over like their last encounter hadn’t ended with Steve storming out of the bar. “C’mon back here a second, want you to meet a couple of guys.”

Steve frowns. “Who?”

“Just some guys,” Bucky says, and just like last time, his big hand is suddenly wrapped around Steve’s arm, making it incredibly hard for Steve to resist without causing a scene. 

_Asshole._

But damned if being manhandled doesn’t make Steve’s heart race a little, too, a fact which infuriates him to no end. 

Steve lets Bucky propel him into Peggy’s office, and like magic, the men in the room all look up from their cards at Bucky’s entrance, waiting for him to speak. “Fellas, this is an old pal of mine from the neighborhood, Steve Rogers.” He claps Steve on the back, gently. “Steve, these are my guys.” He nods to each one in turn. “Barton. Stark. That goofy bastard there is Wade Wilson, and this is Dr. Banner.”

The men nod at Steve, an unexpected kind of respect in their expressions, like maybe he’s an extension of Bucky, and Steve nods back, for want of anything better to do. He’s not sure what the protocol is for meeting a room full of gangsters. Especially when you’re meeting them because you know the biggest and baddest one. They don’t look particularly dangerous, though, sitting around like this. They’re strong-looking, powerful, all handsome with perhaps the exception of Wilson, who has a nasty-looking scar—a burn, it looks like—covering the entirety of his left cheek. When he smiles, the left side of his mouth doesn’t rise as high as the right, and he looks eerily lopsided. 

“If you’re not gonna let Erskine take a look at you, Stevie, at least let Bruce do it,” Bucky says, breaking Steve’s awkward train of thought. 

Steve snaps his head up to look at Bucky, feeling weirdly betrayed. “What?”

“Bruce, Dr. Banner. He’s—ah, he’s something like our personal doc,” Bucky says, and Steve is glad to see that at least he has the good grace to look a little embarrassed about having a “personal doc” for the crew he runs. 

Before Steve can respond, Dr. Banner speaks up in a voice that is surprisingly soft. “You should see Erskine. I’m no specialist—spend all my time patching up these yahoos, not listening to anyone’s lungs.” 

Steve raises a brow, and Banner gives him a little smile. “Heard you coughing at the bar,” he explains. “These idiots, always getting cut up, it’s easy to fix. You’re different.” He pauses and takes a drink of the whiskey in front of him. “Go see Erskine.”

Bucky claps him on the shoulder again. “See, Stevie? Just go. We’ll get it all taken care of.” He looks painfully handsome in this moment, thick and strong, his features soft in the dim light of the office. The slight double of his chin—like he’d had when they were kids, Steve remembers with an unwelcome lurch of his stupid, stupid heart—makes him look almost gentle, and Steve wants, badly, to say yes. 

When he looks over at the hand on his shoulder, though, Bucky’s knuckles are scarred, with fresh, raw wounds across the top. 

Bucky wants to help Steve, wants to heal him—and he wants to do it with money he made by hurting people. 


	3. Chapter 3

Steve has no intention of going to see Dr. Erskine. 

He stays home for a couple of days, leaving only when he absolutely has to, to pick up something to eat, to drop off proofs, to hunt down bits of scrap wood to stretch his canvases. But every time he leaves, he has a sense that something’s different. 

He’s a small guy, not much larger than a kid, and he’s used to being jostled and bumped on Brooklyn’s busy streets. Now, though, the crowds seem to part for him. A man at the drugstore holds the door for him. A woman pulls her child out of Steve’s path by his arm, nearly tugging him off his feet. 

Steve thinks about the other night, meeting Bucky’s crew, the way they’d looked at him, deferentially. Bucky’s not even here, but he’s sending Steve a message, loud and clear. _Whether you like it or not, pal, I’m looking out for you._

It’s infuriating. And not just because Bucky’s forcing Steve to be the unwilling beneficiary of his ill-gotten influence. 

Steve remembers the day of his mother’s funeral, Bucky walking him home, arm around his shoulders. Remembers trying to go inside, get away by himself, and Bucky’s big hand on his shoulder. _I’m with you ‘til the end of the line,_ he’d said. That’s the Bucky he loves, the Bucky he remembers. He wants to cherish those memories, to remember Bucky’s soft hand holding his, a lifetime ago, on top of a table at that long-ago bar, his lips touching Steve’s, his tall, broad body pressing into Steve’s small, slim one.

Bucky—this new, cold version of Bucky—is even invading his memories. Steve can’t think of that long-lost moment before the war without imagining Now-Bucky in the place of Then-Bucky. He imagines wrapping his arms around Bucky’s thicker, solid middle, the roughness of his scarred knuckles, the rasp of his stubble against Steve’s cheek. Bucky had tasted sweet back then, before the war, like gin and lemons and his own sweet self, but that’s not what he’d taste like now. He’d taste of rotgut whiskey and tobacco, and he’d smell of blood and smoke and some dame’s perfume. 

That none of this is even slightly unattractive to Steve is troubling. He shoves the unwelcome thoughts away. 

Steve can’t control Bucky, that much is clear; it’s not his fault if Bucky’s put the word on the street that Steve’s supposed to be left alone. But so long as he has his own free will, he won’t accept any more of Bucky’s warped charity than he absolutely has to. 

He walks up the steps to his front door and fumbles in his pocket for the key. 

Behind him, someone clears their throat. 

“Sorry about this, buddy,” says a voice. Steve turns around and finds a man, tall and vaguely familiar, standing behind him. “What—" he says, but the man just holds up his hand. He seems to be grimacing, but as he steps closer, Steve sees that he’s smiling—and the terrible burn scar on the side of his face has twisted the expression, made it into something awful. 

Steve reels back an arms and punches him, right in the solar plexus. The man doesn’t even flinch. 

“Feel better, sugar?” 

Steve shakes his hand, which stings from the impact. “I guess Bucky sent you?” 

“Course he did. And I never could say no to anyone as pretty as him.” 

“I can,” Steve says, glaring out the window. 

“So you agree that he’s pretty?” 

“I—" Steve starts to say that no, he doesn’t, but he’s always been rubbish at lying. 

Wade Wilson laughs. “Well, good. You’re an artist, after all, I’d expect you to have an eye for beauty. Shall we go?” 

“Do I have any choice?” 

“

Of course not. But it’s polite to pretend. Didn’t anyone teach you any damn manners?” He takes hold of Steve’s arm and drags him down the stairs, as inexorable as fate. 

*

Dr. Erskine’s office isn’t anything like what Steve had imagined. 

In pulp novels and comics, gangsters get medical treatment in the back of butcher’s shops, or endure rough emergency surgery on billiard tables in houses of ill repute. Abraham Erskine, M.D., practices out of a handsome old brownstone in Queens, and the office is tidy and cozy, with well-worn leather chairs in the waiting room, and bright sunlight filtering through the windows. There are families waiting there, parents with children. It’s as far from his idea of a mob hospital as it can be. 

He’s sitting on the padded exam table in a small private room, while Erskine pores over his clipboard. “Very impressive,” the doctor says finally. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a comprehensive list of physical ailments outside a medical textbook.” 

“So there’s nothing you can do,” Steve says dully. In spite of everything, he realizes, he’d hoped. 

“Of course I can do something,” Erskine says. “I can’t just pop you into a magic tube and fix everything; medicine doesn’t work that way—but treatments for respiratory ailments have come a long way.” 

“They have?” 

“Well, they have here,” Erskine gestures around the room. 

Steve looks around the unassuming exam room, perplexed. 

“Oh, not _here_ here, but in our lab. Cutting edge research, incorporating the latest science from around the world.” 

“In Queens?” 

“Is that such a surprise? I thought all New Yorkers believed this to be the center of the universe?” 

“That’s Brooklyn,” Steve says, smiling reluctantly. 

Erskine returns his smile, and gathers several bottles from a nearby cabinet. “These, you’ll take four times a day. They should reduce the number and severity of your attacks. And this,” he holds up a small metal tube with a rubber mouthpiece. “This is a nebulizer. It contains drugs that will calm your lungs even after an attack has started. Keep this on your person at all times. You may collect refills here as you need them.” 

Steve takes them, bemused. “Can I ask you something?” 

“Anything.” 

“How’d you get tied up with the mob?” 

Erskine blinks and cocks his head. “The mob?” 

“Y’know. Frankie Muldoon, and Bucky…James Barnes.” 

“I’m sorry to say I don’t know Mr. Muldoon. As for Sergeant Barnes, he saved my life during the war. You heard, I suppose, about the camps?” 

“Oh. Yes, yes of course. I’m so sorry.” 

“No need,” Erskine says, waving it away with his hand. “He does ask me to provide a certain amount of after-hours care from time to time, if that’s what you mean, and there’s a certain understanding that we have, that I should not ask any unnecessary questions, but it’s no hardship to me. He pays well, and I turn every dollar to my research. So, you see? He does a great deal of good in the world, whether he knows it or not.” 

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Steve asks. He worries that he’s pushing too hard, heaping insult upon insult onto this kind, dignified gentleman, but he can’t quite help it; he wants to understand how a man like this, who so obviously wants to help people, can work with someone like Bucky. 

Erskine smiles, and it’s a kind smile, even if there’s a certain hardness behind it. “I’ve seen what evil looks like, Mr. Rogers,” he says. “I’ve lived with it. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that James Barnes is not an evil man. A troubled man, certainly. Damaged, absolutely. But as for the way he makes a living? I call that surviving.” 

“He hurts people,” Steve says. 

“He also helps people.” 

“The things he does…it’s all against the law.” 

“Ha. Nobody’s perfect. And what have laws ever done for people like you and me, hm?” He meets Steve’s eyes, unflinching and serious. Steve looks away, abashed. “Now, no more questions. You start the pills tonight, and see if you don’t start breathing a little easier by the end of the week. Any problems, you come to me immediately, any time of the day or night. Off you go.” 

Steve slides off the table, stuffing bottles into his pockets, muttering his thanks. 

“You’re welcome,” Erskine says. “And if you see him, please tell Mr. Barnes that he has, and will always have, my deepest gratitude.” 

*

Peggy tosses her bar towel over her shoulder and sinks onto a stool next to Angie with a sigh. 

“Almost there,” Angie says, nodding at the last few stragglers in the corner booth, wrapping up a game of cards. “The guy promised to get out of here as soon as he won enough money to pay his tab.” 

“Perhaps we should just ask them to lock up when they’re done,” Peggy says, and Angie scoots closer, letting her knee bump into Peggy’s. Peggy pushes back, wanting the contact. 

“How’s it going? With Barnes?” 

“So, far, so good,” Peggy says. “He’s been at the books, of course.” 

Angie’s eyes widen in alarm. “He find anything?” 

“Of course not, darling. There’s nothing there to find, or I wouldn’t have let him look. I keep excellent books.” 

“So you don’t think he…” Angie breaks off, glancing around, but nobody’s there; just the little gaggle in the corner, laughing and smoking, still playing cards. 

“Suspects anything?” Peggy asks, lifting her eyebrows and giving the word a dramatic inflection. “Lord, no. Hopefully he has other things to worry about.” 

Angie nudges her knee again. “You think about knocking it off for a while? Just ‘til things settle down with Barnes?” 

Peggy turns to look at her. Their faces are close, and Peggy can just sense the faint, fresh scent of soap beneath the familiar bar smells of smoke and brass polish that always permeate Angie’s clothes by the end of a long night. “Never,” she says. 

“Good.” 

Angie moves closer, just a little, and their lips touch, lightly at first, but Angie tastes good, feels good, and without really meaning to, she slides a little closer, tilts her head, deepening the kiss. Angie’s hand slides up along the side of her face, the tips of her fingers slipping into the hair at the nape of her neck. Her fingers are cool against the warm skin there. 

It’s so easy to get carried away with Angie. It’s never this way with men; there are always calculations to be made with men. With Angie, there’s nothing but this, her soft, soft mouth, her gentle hands, her slight, strong body, these soft, sweet moments of closeness. 

After a while—Peggy has no idea how long—someone nearby clears their throat. She pulls away from the kiss languidly, not bothering to hurry. It’s her bar, regardless of who owns it, and it’s a half hour past closing. She’s through hurrying. 

“Uh,” says the sailor, standing awkwardly in front of them, a handful of bills extended in their direction. “Thanks for not giving us the boot,” he says. “Have a good night, ladies.” 

“What’d you think we were trying to do?” Angie growls, taking the cash and stuffing it into her apron pocket. “Thanks, and scram.” 

The sailor scrams, pausing to grin and wink at them as he dons his cap at the door. 

“It’s no wonder we’re doing such good business, with that charming bedside manner of yours,” Peggy says, flicking the brim of Angie’s cap. 

“You like me on the side of the bed, wait ‘til you see what I can do _in_ it,” Angie says, standing up and catching Peggy’s hand, pulling her up. 

“Minx.” 

“

Vixen.” 

“I adore you, do you know that?” 

“Yeah,” Angie whispers. “But I never get tired of hearing it.” 

*

When Steve had left Erskine’s office, he’d promised himself he was going to stay away from Bucky, from the Off Prospect, from all of it. 

He’d acquiesced, let Bucky pay for his medical treatment—which, as much as it rankles Steve to admit it, has been nothing short of a miracle, and it still shocks him whenever he can stop an asthma attack nearly before it begins—and so now Bucky, surely, will let him be. Bucky’s made his grand gesture, waved his money around. Now they can go back to ignoring one another, exchanging curt nods and glances if they run into one another on the street. 

Or, at least, that’s what Steve would like to have happen. 

What actually happens is that the neighborhood continues to treat him with weirdly fearful deference, which is unsettling, and he misses Peggy and Angie and Sam and everyone at the Off, which is unsurprising. He ends up back at the bar most evenings. 

Steve half-expects Bucky to crow about how right he’d been, how much healthier Steve looks after seeing Erskine. He doesn’t, though. 

“Lookin’ all right there, Stevie,” is all Bucky says the first time Steve wanders in after his appointment. Then he peels a few bills off of the obnoxiously large stack in his hand and tosses them off to Peter, the kid behind the bar, dispatching him to a deli down the street for knishes and latkes. When he returns, Bucky takes his grease-spotted bag of food, waves off his change, and disappears into Peggy’s office—which is now Bucky’s office in everything but name—leaving Steve to grind his teeth in response to the worshipful admiration in Peter’s eyes. 

“Oughtta draw our little Soviet gal sometime,” Bucky says another night, peering over Steve’s shoulder at his sketchbook. Bucky points up to the stage, where Natasha is slinking around dangerously, glass of whiskey in hand. 

Steve scowls a little, and Bucky just grins at him, taking a huge bite of the pastrami sandwich in his hand. 

“You been back to Erskine for more medicine yet?” Bucky asks when nearly a month has passed. “Or am I gonna have to send Wilson around to escort you again?” 

Before Steve can answer, Wilson pops his head up, grinning like the lunatic Steve sort of suspects that he is. “Glad to do it, pal.” He jerks a thumb toward Bucky. “You should see the other shit he’s got me doin’ most days. Taking a pretty gent for a checkup is a vacation.” 

If Bucky is uncomfortable at Wade’s reference to the more unsavory aspects of his line of work, he doesn’t show it. He just smirks, that little half-grin that pops his dimples, and then downs half a glass of beer in one long swallow. 

“I need to find more shit to keep you busy, Wilson,” he drawls, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in a gesture that makes Steve’s stomach clench unexpectedly. “Every time I turn around, you’re sitting right there”—he points to the stool Wilson’s occupying—“making eyes at him.” At the word _him_ , Bucky jerks his head toward Sam, who’s at the other end of the bar, deeply engaged in a conversation with Peggy. 

Wilson shrugs, apparently not even remotely bothered by the accusation. “Your boss runs a fairy joint, you get the idea you’re allowed to look.” 

“There’s money in it,” Bucky says easily. “Besides, it keeps ‘em from getting busted.”

Clint Barton, the member of Bucky’s crew whom Steve knows the least, huffs laughter into his whiskey. “You’re a real Robin Hood, boss.”

“I’m—I don’t need an escort,” Steve interrupts before the conversation can get any farther afield, and Bucky winks at him.

“Long as you get over to Erskine’s sometime this week, I won’t send one, then.” He turns to Wilson. “Looks like your services aren’t required, Wade.” 

“Damn. Guess I’ll just have to sit right here and enjoy the view,” Wilson says, his eyes sparkling as he waggles his brows suggestively down the bar in Sam’s direction. 

*

Bucky’s looking over Peggy’s ledger when the kid knocks, rapping against the office doorframe with a confidence that’s surprising, given that he’s about 120 pounds soaking wet and his voice probably dropped all of a year ago. 

“Here you go, Mr. Barnes,” Peter says, brandishing a sandwich wrapped in butcher paper and setting it down beside Bucky’s bottle of Scotch. He starts to pull the change from his pocket, the way he always does, and Bucky gestures for him to keep it, the way _he_ always does. 

“Thanks, kid.” He stabs out his cigarette and unwraps his food, eyeballing Peter over the desk. “You seen Steve tonight?” 

Peter shakes his head, dirty blond hair falling in his eyes. “No, sir. Hasn’t been in today.”

Bucky nods, neither replying nor dismissing the boy, and turns his attention to his food—an enormous meatball sub, dripping with cheese and grease. 

Peter shuffles his feet for a second and clears his throat, and Bucky hides a smile. He likes this kid, likes how ballsy he is. He’s more relaxed around Bucky than a lot of grown men are, which could just as easily be a testament to the stupidity of youth as to his bravery, but Bucky likes it either way. It gets tiresome, people walking on eggshells around him all the time. 

“Uh, sir?”

Bucky takes a huge bite and doesn’t bother chewing before he answers. “Yeah?” 

“If you were wanting to see Steve? You might go see him somewhere besides the Off,” he mumbles, kicking his feet around a little. 

Bucky swallows and sets his sandwich down, gracelessly swiping a napkin across his mouth. “Yeah, kid? Why would I do that?” 

Peter inhales, his narrow chest and shoulders visibly rising. “Well. You—ah, you knew him around the way, yeah? Before you were—uh, you know.”

“Known him since we was kids,” Bucky says, both because it’s true and because he knows exactly what Peter’s trying so delicately to express. He knew Steve before it was his job to hurt people, either in Europe or back in Brooklyn. 

“Well.” Peter coughs. “Seems like if you wanted it to be like it was before, maybe you should see him when you aren’t at work.”

Bucky feels his eyebrows rise up of their own accord, and he buys himself a few moments to think, pouring another glass of Scotch that he probably doesn’t need. This nosy fuckin’ kid. “What makes you think I want anything from Steve?” 

Peter shrugs, and now he looks straight up into Bucky’s face. “Maybe you don’t, Mr. Barnes, and I’m sorry, I’ll shut up if you don’t. But you ask about him a lot, and—it's just—look, I know sometimes you gotta be one way at work and another way at home. Steve knew you before you were—uh—at work. That’s all.”

Bucky clears his throat. The kid might have a point. Maybe. “Get outta here, Parker. Isn’t there something needs doing out front?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, Mr. Barnes. I’ll, uh, go get a drink for Miss Romanoff. Her set’s almost over.” Peter’s cheeks flame up pink, and Bucky grins knowingly, suddenly back on familiar ground.

“Jesus, she’s a little old for you, don’t you think? Need to find yourself a gal your own age.”

“The last time a gal my age came in the Off, _she_ found herself a gal and _they_ spent the night making out in the corner booth,” Peter says, giving Bucky a long-suffering expression. 

Bucky snorts and picks his sandwich back up. “Good point, kid.” 

*

The knocking at his apartment door is insistent, almost demanding, but Steve’s irritation fades away when he opens the door and sees Bucky standing there, nearly filling the entire frame. He looks dapper, with a fresh shave and his hair slicked back, smelling more like expensive cigars than whiskey. 

He looks like trouble. He always does. 

“What are you doing here? I told you I’d go see Erskine,” Steve says, sounding shorter than he means to. 

“I know you did. I just"—Bucky runs a hand through his hair and shoves it back, a gesture he’s had since they were kids—"Just thought it would be nice to see you somewhere besides the bar. You gonna invite me in or what?”

Steve frowns, but steps back out of the doorway. “Do I have a choice?”

“You always got a choice.”

“Do I?” Steve murmurs, watching as Bucky strides into his apartment with that same casually proprietary sense of ownership that he exudes at the bar and in the street. “Do you give people choices anymore?”

“Sure, but there’s usually only one they wanna take,” Bucky says, and Steve blinks at the quick, brutal honesty. 

Before he can think of a response, Bucky plops down on his sofa, and Steve can’t help but stare at the sheer size of him. He’s _big_ , bigger than he’s ever been, either before the war, when he’d occasionally get a little soft around the waist during the winter, or after, when he’d gotten bulky with muscle and fat. Now he’s even bigger, and it seems like he takes up all the space in Steve’s little apartment with his broad shoulders, and his padded chest, and the unmistakable curve of his gut resting over the clearly stressed waistband of his trousers. His broad thighs are spread wide in a masculine sprawl that looks almost obscene. 

“You been okay?” Bucky asks, shifting on the sofa like he’s trying to get comfortable. The buttons of his shirtfront are pulling and Steve thinks, a little wildly, that if Bucky took a full breath his belly would show between the straining buttons. “Steve? That puffer working for you? Erskine said you came and got a refill.”

Steve nods hard, trying to clear his head. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s helping.” It’s not quite a thank you, but it’s close.

“You look good,” Bucky says, and Steve steps back until the backs of his knees hit the little rocking chair in the corner of the room, the one that had been his ma’s, and he drops into it. 

“Uh. Thanks, Buck.”

Bucky flashes one of his big, toothy grins, and it makes him look younger even though the corners of his eyes crinkle up in tell-tale lines. “No problem.” He looks around Steve’s apartment, and Steve tries not to squirm, tries not to wonder if it looks shabby to him now, to this new version of Bucky who carries fat wads of cash and throws them around like they’re nothing. 

“You eaten yet?” Bucky suddenly asks, fastening his blue-gray gaze back on Steve. 

“Eaten? What, dinner?” Steve asks stupidly, taken aback by the line of questioning. 

“No, breakfast,” Bucky cracks, making a pantomime of reaching for his pocket watch. He doesn’t actually look at it, though, and somewhere in the very back of Steve’s mind, he wonders if it’s because Bucky’s trousers are too tight to tug it out. 

_Jesus._ “Um, no?” Steve clears his throat and tries for something more assertive. “No. Not yet.” 

“Let’s go, then.” Bucky jerks his chin toward the door. “Walk down to Ava’s and order a couple burgers.”

 _Yes_ is in Steve’s throat, but at the last second he swallows it down. “Did you tell people I was, um, connected?”

“Connected?” Bucky snorts. “Yeah, Steve, told ‘em you were all mobbed up these days.”

“Goddamn it. You know what I mean. People keep falling over themselves to get out of my way. Me. Like I might be somebody.”

The grin fades from Bucky’s round face, and he shrugs. “If it keeps people from fucking with you.”

“I don’t want people to be scared of me, Buck! I hate it.”

Bucky looks at him steadily. “Well, then come to Ava’s with me. I promise everyone’ll be so scared of me they’ll hardly even look twice at you.”

He shouldn’t go. He shouldn’t, not when Bucky’s already running his favorite bar and paying for his doctor visits and showing up at his apartment like it’s 1942 again. Because it’s _not_ 1942, and it won’t ever be again. 

“Yeah, okay,” he says, like his mouth and his brain aren’t even passing acquaintances. 

Bucky grins again, easy and wide, and he hauls himself up off the sofa. “All right, pal. It ain’t too cold for milkshakes, you think?” 

Steve just shakes his head, trailing Bucky out the door of his own damn place. 


	4. Chapter 4

“You sure you want to keep this up, doll?” Sam Wilson says. It’s early, and the Off Prospect is quiet—mostly. He can hear the kid, Parker, banging dishes around in the kitchen, and Angie yelling at him from the bedroom upstairs to keep it down. 

Peggy’s hair is loose around her shoulders, and a paisley smoking jacket is draped over her blue silk pajamas. She counts out a stack of bills behind the bar. 

“A thousand on Calendar Girl to win.” She slaps the money down in front of Sam, like a challenge. 

Sam glances around the room, even though he knows Peggy wouldn’t even be discussing this if Barnes were here. 

“Calendar Girl?” He ignores the money and unfolds his newspaper, scanning the list for the midday race. “Fifteen to one against,” he says. “And there are only fifteen horses running. Is this really the right time to be taking bigger-than-usual risks?” 

“It absolutely is,” Peggy says. “That’ll be a return of fifteen thousand dollars. Ought to hold us for a while, if Barnes continues to make things sticky around here.” 

“Oughtta hold us for a year, if things stay sticky,” Sam agrees. “And it’s liable to get you killed if we lose.” 

“The men and women at the VBA risked their lives for us, and all they got in exchange was a blue discharge and no job prospects when they got home,” she says. “It’s the least I can do.” 

“There are people who do less, believe me,” Sam says. 

“Just bloody take the money.” 

Sam just looks at her. 

“We’ll win,” Peggy says. “I’ve been down to the track, Sam, I’ve seen them.” 

The rule of horseracing, Sam knows, is that you should never do it unless you know more than everyone else in the betting pool. Left to his own devices, then, he’d never do it. Peggy, though—she always seems to have some unprecedented insight, some gut-level instinct for picking winners. 

Three years earlier, she’d pushed a few dollars across the bar and told him, “If you’ll place this on Kickin’ Dickens for me down at the track, you can keep the winnings for the VBA.” 

He’d taken the money and shrugged. “It’s your money,” he’d said. “But if you want to throw your cash away, you might consider a straight donation.” 

“Crooked’s more my style,” she’d said. “Lay the bet, and see what happens.” 

She’d won, of course, and he’d ended up with a thousand dollars, which he’d used to rent the hall where the VBA held classes and meetings. She’d won every time since then, too. If she’d just been doing it for the money, he wouldn’t trust her like he does; but she never lays a bet without a good reason, never keeps any of her winnings. He’d jokingly told her that she was like a comic-book hero, using her superpowers for good—but it’s no joke, not really; her preternatural sense for calling races had done more good than any well-intentioned Quaker had ever managed. 

He trusts her. He doesn’t trust anything else about the current situation. He sure as hell doesn’t trust Bucky Barnes. 

He sips his beer and looks at the money. Fifteen thousand would mean more training, more resources, more jobs for men and women whose lives would otherwise be ruined, people the army—hell, the whole country—would just as soon throw away. 

“All right,” he says finally. “You know when he’ll be back?” 

“Barnes? He was here late last night, and he finished going over the books. But he’ll be back tomorrow—he's always here when Natasha sings. And all day on Sunday, of course.” 

“Well, if you haven’t lost your touch, I should be back tonight and there’ll be nothing for him to notice.” Sam says. He slips the cash into an inside pocket. “I’ll call you from the track soon as I know,” he promises. 

*

The waitress arrives with their food a scant five minutes after they’d been seated, and Steve notes that her hands are trembling a little as she sets their plates in front of them. 

“Anything else, sir?” she asks Bucky. She ignores Steve almost completely, barely looking at him when she slides the plate in his direction. 

Bucky, however, looks directly at him. “Stevie? You good?” 

“I’m good. Thanks.” 

Bucky turns back to the waitress. “Thanks, dollface. I’ll be needing a refill on this coffee in a few minutes, but there’s no hurry. You worry about the other guests.” He removes a few bills from his wallet and slips them into the waitress’s apron pocket. She departs, blushing. 

“You don’t have to tell her how to do her job,” Steve says. “You don’t have to get fresh with her, either.” He picks up a French fry and pokes the other fries on his plate with it.

“I have to tell her what I expect,” Bucky says. “Clarity is important. Can’t expect people to do what you want if you don’t tell’em what you want, right?” 

“Huh,” Steve says. 

“What’s that’s supposed to mean?” 

“I keep telling you to leave me alone,” Steve says. “Doesn’t seem to be working out for me.” 

“That’s because—" Bucky starts to say, but he stops abruptly, and his right hand, resting on the table, clenches into a fist. 

“Because nobody gets hurt for not doing what I say?” Steve asks. 

“Because I don’t think you really want me to,” Bucky says, His fist unclenches, his shoulders relax, and he leans back in his seat. Steve notices again how _big_ he is, his chest and shoulders nearly spanning the small booth, shirt buttons straining in their holes. “Just eat your dinner, okay?” 

Steve pops the fry into his mouth, and watches when Bucky takes a huge bite of his burger. He’d ordered milkshakes, too, as promised, and they arrive a few minutes later, in huge frosty glasses, with a little extra on the side in tall metal tumblers. 

Bucky always seems to be eating, lately, and Steve is dimly aware that it’s enjoyable to watch him do it. He likes the little noise of pleasure Bucky makes when he bites into his burger, likes watching his jaw move while he chews. _You like being bossed around by him, too,_ says a small, uncomfortable voice somewhere deep in his brain. _Like being pushed around, like being looked after, like that if he said “jump,” everyone in this restaurant would ask, “how high?”_

He shoves the thoughts aside, but he can’t really refocus his anger. Bucky winks when Steve looks up at him again. 

“Been meaning to ask you something,” Bucky says with his mouth full. “You do that mural, the one on the wall at the Off? Looked like your work.” 

Steve blinks, surprised. “Yeah,” he says. “That was me. Why?” 

“Might have a job for you, is all. Think you could do something like that again? Maybe on a bigger scale?” 

“Maybe,” Steve says. “What’d you have in mind?” 

“Not me,” Bucky says. “Frankie. You hear he’s been living at the Hotel St. George?” He finished the last of his burger in one huge bite and washes it down with a swig of milkshake. 

“No,” Steve says, even though this is, in fact, common knowledge. 

“Well he is. Penthouse. He wants to liven the place up a little. I thought of you.” 

“Think of someone else,” Steve says. 

“You wouldn’t be working for Frankie,” Bucky says. “You’d be working for the St. George. Come on, Stevie, think about it, okay? No more of that nickel-and-dime magazine stuff—you'd actually be doing something big, something everybody’d see.” He leans back in the booth, resting a hand over his middle, and Steve can’t help but notice that the shirt he’s wearing looks even tighter than it had before. 

“I don’t know,” he says. 

“So think about it.” Bucky polishes off the last of his milkshake with a sigh. “Jesus. I could drink those things all day.” 

_You look like you do,_ Steve thinks, but all he says is, “You can have mine, I don’t want it.” He slides his glass across the table. 

Bucky sips the milkshake, eyes on Steve. “Man, that’s good,” he says. “They make’em so thick here.” 

Steve squirms in his seat. “So is that all you wanted? Just to ask me to do a job for your boss?” 

Bucky lifts an eyebrow. “Why’d you come, you hate being here so much?” 

Steve opens his mouth, realizes he doesn’t have a clear answer, and closes it again. “Shut up and drink my milkshake,” is all he says. 

*

Clint Barton lowers his newspaper and watches as Sam Wilson walks out the door of the Off Prospect and strides purposefully down the street, hands in his pockets, head down. Clint folds the paper, crams it into his pocket, and takes off after Sam. 

He meets Wade at the corner, and nods after Sam. “Think you were right about him, Wade,” he says, as they continue on together. “What’s he doing in there at this time of day?” 

“Being gorgeous,” Wade says. “But also highly suspicious.” 

“Could be nothing,” Clint suggests. “Sometimes it is.” 

“I’d be a little disappointed if it’s nothing,” Wade says. “I like a man with an air of mystery and danger.” 

“One of these days, you’ll have to tell me what you _don’t_ like.” 

“If I ever figure that out, you’ll be the first person I tell.” 

“He’s getting on the train,” Clint says, and after waiting as long as they dare, they hurry to the ticket booth, just managing to hop on the car behind him as the train departs. 

“I’ll go get eyes on him,” Wade mutters to Clint, once the train’s moving, but Clint stops him with a hand on his shoulder. 

“I think you’ve had your eyes on him often enough that he’s noticed,” he says. “Let me, he’s less likely to recognize me.” 

Sam departs the train at Locust Manor, and Clint and Wade follow, letting a large and rowdy group of men disembark in front of them to maintain their cover. 

“Jamaica Racecourse?” Clint asks. 

“Can’t think of anything else to do up this way,” Wade agrees. 

“Maybe he just likes to gamble.” 

“Doesn’t he work for some welfare outfit? Where’s he get the money?” 

“Where’s anyone get it? Besides, rich people don’t gamble, you know that.” They watch Sam stand in line at the betting office, then take a seat on a bench to wait. Clint motions to Wade to stay put, and walks to the betting window. 

“Hey,” he says to the man at the counter. “You see that guy behind me, over there on the bench? Dark red jacket? What’d he just put down?” 

“Who wants to know?” 

Clint eases his jacket open, revealing the butt of his .38. “Frankie Muldoon wants to know.” 

The man’s eyes widen and he steps back, hands lifted slightly in front of him, the posture of a man who doesn’t want any trouble. “He put a grand on Calendar Girl to win,” he says. “Must be one of these guys that has a problem with math.” 

“Thanks.” Clint heads back out, where Wade is still leaning on the side of the building, smoking idly. “Your sweetheart just slapped down a grand on a fifteen-to-one longshot,” he says. 

“Atta boy,” Wade says, with a slightly loopy grin. “Knew he was on the make.” 

“You ain’t wrong. Could be a coincidence, I guess—maybe he just stopped by the Off to say hello, shoot the shit, and then came down here to watch the ponies.” 

“And maybe it ain’t that simple. So what’s the plan?” 

Clint frowns. “We need more. Where’d he get the money, what’s he doing with it, where does he go from here? The boss’ll want to know.” 

“So we babysit him,” Wade says. 

“Yeah. And once we know the score, we talk to Bucky.” 

*

After dinner, Bucky walks Steve home. 

They walk in companionable silence, just like always, and just like always, Bucky walks on the street side, occasionally draping an arm around Steve’s shoulders to shepherd him around some obstacle or crowd. Steve feels small, and safe, and angry at himself for liking it. 

Bucky walks up the steps with him, kicking the brick where he keeps his key and leaning over with a grunt to pick it up. “Shouldn’t have had that second milkshake,” he says, one hand on his belly as he stands up, breathing hard. 

“Probably shouldn’t have eaten all my fries, either.” 

“Funny thing,” Bucky says. “Kinda got the idea that you wanted me to.” He shoots Steve a look that’s far too knowing for comfort. Steve looks down at the weathered wooden boards of his porch and scuffs his foot back and forth in the dust. The situation reminds him of another night, a long time ago, a kiss in a bar that wasn't the Off. _Did you like it?_ Bucky had asked. He’d been younger, smaller, less confident then; now he knows what Steve likes. 

He takes a step closer, looming over Steve, his broad body blocking out light, so close Steve can feel the warmth of him. “You like me doing that kind of stuff,” Bucky says, as if he’d just read Steve’s mind. “You like it. Admit it. You wanted me to drink two milkshakes and eat all your fries and most of your cheeseburger. You like it.” 

“I didn’t want it to go to waste,” Steve says, but Bucky just laughs and shakes his head. 

“You go ahead and tell yourself that,” Bucky says. “Always got to make everything harder than it needs to be.” 

Steve shivers. “And you go on pretending that it’s easy.” 

Bucky takes another step closer, grabs hold of Steve’s arm in one big hand, and pulls him close, so close that Steve’s chest bumps up against the curve of his belly. Steve has to fight not to go limp against him, not to lean forward and wrap his arms around Bucky, not to give in totally to the unspoken demand in that hard, possessive grip. 

“It is that easy,” Bucky says, low, into his ear. “It always was.” 

And then he releases Steve’s arm and is down the stairs and on the street before Steve can even catch his breath. 

*

“What do you know about Wade Wilson?” It’s late, and the bar’s practically empty; Bucky and his crew have been mysteriously absent all evening, so it seems like a good time to ask.

Peggy doesn’t even bother looking up from the glasses she’s stacking under the bar. “I know he’s trouble, Sam.”

Sam sighs. Yes, he’d figured that much out himself. “Yeah, but – trouble like Capital T trouble or trouble like a good time?”

Now Peggy does stand up, squaring her shoulders and fixing him with an entirely British gaze of disapproval. “Trouble like he murders people for Bucky Barnes for a living. That kind of trouble. That scar—“

Sam cuts her off. “The scar doesn’t bother me.”

Peggy rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t saying it should bother you. I was saying you should ask him where he got it, if you want to know what kind of trouble he is.”

As Sam finishes his beer, Peggy braces her hands on the bar and stares at him. “So are you already making time with him?” 

Sam can’t help the little smile that creeps across his face, both at Peggy’s serious, long-suffering expression and at the question itself—at the annoying, disarming way it makes the bottom drop out of Sam’s stomach. “No-o,” he says, drawling the word out a little and pushing his glass across the bar. 

Peggy refills it and slides it back to him. “Are you going to?”

Sam considers the question. Is he going to? Does he want to know what it might feel like to press himself up against Wade’s lean, strong frame, to have that charming, crooked smile aimed at him over a private table instead of across the bar at the Off? “He walked me home the other night,” he finally says. 

“Jesus Christ, Sam. That’s the last thing you need.” 

“Sort of like the last thing _you_ need to be doing is stealing money from his boss?”

“It was borrowed,” Peggy says crisply, swiping a rag across the already-clean counter. “And you’re welcome.” 

“Me and the vets thank you. We also hope you don’t do it again.”

“Yes, well. We’ll see,” Peggy says, and Sam can tell by the gleam in her eye that she’s already got her sights set on another horse—despite the fact that the Calendar Girl upset had only been two weeks earlier. “At any rate, darling, it’s much safer to steal from a criminal than sleep with one. Fewer entanglements.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Angie says, materializing from the side of the bar and injecting herself into the conversation. “As someone who goes to bed with a criminal every night, I can tell you that I’m thoroughly entangled.” She drapes an arm over Peggy’s shoulder, trailing her fingers over her collarbone, and Peggy inhales sharply before melting back against her girlfriend. Sam has a split second feeling of voyeurism, as if he’s unwittingly intruded on something private. They’re like that—their connection obvious, their intimacy clear, even to a casual observer. 

“It’s not a crime if you return it,” Peggy insists, rolling her eyes. “And shush, both of you. Your boyfriend just walked in, Sam.” 

Sam’s stupid heart thuds a little faster as Wade sidles through the door. 

*

Steve feels a little sick when he walks into the Hotel St. George, partly from anticipation and partly from guilt. 

He’d tried to ignore Bucky’s offer, tried to ignore Bucky altogether. He’d tried to ignore the temptation of a real artist’s commission like the St. George instead of the advertisements he does to pay his rent. He’d tried to ignore the prideful voice in the back of his head that said he deserved the chance to take on such a project. 

And most of all, he’d tried to ignore the tingly, heart-pounding memory of how it had felt to sit across from Bucky in the diner. He tried to ignore the way Bucky’s excess—the way he casually glutted himself on food and power, like he was ruled entirely by baser instincts—made Steve so painfully, shamefully aroused he could barely even form coherent thoughts about it. His brain, whenever he let himself consider Bucky as he was now, was just a mishmash of images: Bucky sprawling back in his booth, belly pushing at his shirt-buttons. Bucky chasing the last of his milkshake with a spoon. Bucky shamelessly acknowledging that he’d eaten so much it hurt to bend over his own gut and retrieve Steve’s house key. Bucky insisting that everything was easy, that you could have what you wanted if you just reached out for it. 

Steve was something of a master at self-denial, but he couldn’t ignore Bucky. Not for long. Not at all. 

When he’d walked back into the Off after a week of avoiding the place and told Bucky he’d do it, Bucky had just grinned, pulling him into a brief, one-armed hug that pressed Steve up against the padded strength of his ribs for one brain-melting second, and nodded. “I’ll set it up,” he’d said casually, and Steve had wanted to punch him square in the nose for his arrogance. He’d also wanted, a little, to stay tucked up under his thick arm, pressed up against his thicker body. 

*

“You’re Bucky’s little artist,” a voice says, and Steve nearly drops his sketchbook as he whirls around. 

Frankie Muldoon, clad in casual slacks and a sweater, holding a cup of tea and looking disarmingly like someone’s grandfather, stands in the doorway between the bedroom and the sitting area. Steve grips his pencil so tightly it snaps. 

“Uh—yes, sir,” he says, hating the _sir_ but unable to swallow it back. “I’m Steve. Steve Rogers. I’m here to—uh, to work.” He gestures vaguely around, encompassing the entire enormous sitting room, all of the furniture helpfully shoved away from the expanse of the west wall, which is his to paint as he chooses. “I thought the penthouse was empty, no one told me you would be here.”

“I told them to let you up,” Frankie says, ambling into the room and taking a seat on the out-of-place settee that Steve’s work has relocated. "I don’t give a shit what you paint, you know,” he says conversationally, tucking a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and striking a match on this thumbnail. “Just make it look halfway decent.”

Steve frowns. Inhales. “I wouldn’t have taken the job if I couldn’t do it well.”

At this, Frankie grins, huffing laughter around a smoker’s cough. “Bucky said you were a pistol.” 

“Did you only get the hotel to hire me for this because Bucky asked you to?” Steve asks, because he’s never known when to shut his mouth in his entire goddamned life. 

More laughter. “I know you’re his fella, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I am not—that’s not what—“

“And I wouldn’t give a shit if he wanted to dress you up in garters and take you out dancing,” Frankie interrupts. “Long as he does his job right—and he does, he was made for this line of work—what the fuck do I care?” He stubs his cigarette out in a crystal ashtray and sends a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. “There’s money in it, anyway. The wops have been running fairy bars for years. ‘Bout time we did, too.” 

Steve grits his teeth, but before he can open his mouth, Frankie’s talking again. “I’d offer you a job working for me, I thought you’d take it. You’re scrappy enough for it.” 

“I do all right,” Steve says stiffly, looking back down at the half-drawn plans in his sketchbook. 

“I bet you do, son.” 

Steve just nods, working in awkward silence as he blocks out designs on the page. The St. George—through Bucky—had given him carte blanche to do what he liked with the mural, and he sketches out lines for a street scene, a rollicking aerial view of the neighborhood with St. Ann’s in the background. 

If it weren’t for the aging gangster lounging behind him, apparently content just to sit there and observe, it would be the most fun Steve’s ever had at work. 

He manages to wait long enough for Frankie to smoke another cigarette and finish his tea before he speaks up again. “Did Bucky tell you that I was his…ah, his fella?”

“No.” Frankie grins like a shark, all teeth and no kindness. “I’m just in the business of being able to tell what a man likes best in the world. And Buck? He likes pastrami from that kike deli on Montague, and he likes you.” 

*

“You gonna let me walk you home again, handsome?” Wade leans back against the bar, just a half-step too close to Sam, so that their shoulders are only a few inches apart. Sam can smell his cologne and see how closely cropped his hair is on the sides, how neatly tailored his vest and slacks are. 

“You know, I’ve been making that trip by myself just fine for an awfully long time,” Sam demurs, because a part of him wants, very badly, to let this man walk him home again. And maybe come upstairs this time. 

“Yeah, well, you’re in a rough part of town,” Wade says happily, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Bruce Banner and Clint Barton, who are idling at the end of the bar. “Look at these degenerates hanging around. You need an escort to make sure you get there safe.”

Sam makes a point of flicking his eyes down to Wade’s chest and then back up. “A skinny white boy’s gonna keep me safe?” It’s a line he hasn’t pushed on yet, the race thing, in this little game they’re playing. 

Wade laughs, low and easy, like he’s absolutely delighted with the insult. “The world’s chock full of skinny white boys who do terrible things, so you need one on your side, is all.”

Sam inhales. A skinny white boy who does terrible things. He doesn’t know Wade very well, but he has a stunningly honest streak that Sam can’t decide if he likes or not. Peggy’s words from the other night— _that scar, you should ask him where he got it_ —flash through his memory. 

“What happened to your face?” 

Wade sobers, looking at Sam, steady and without expression, for a few seconds too long. Sam can feel his heart pick up—fear, this time, and regret at his own stupid bravery—but then suddenly Wade’s easy grin returns, cockier than ever. “Before I was working for Bucky, I made a career out of blowing shit up for Frankie Muldoon.” He gestures vaguely to the side of his face, where his skin is mottled and scarred, rough with burn tissue from his ear to the side of his nose, down to his jaw line. “Car bomb went off a little early.” 

Bombs. The kind of weapon that kills indiscriminately, one that might explode in a crowded street full of children, or when someone’s wife started a vehicle. 

The last swallow of Sam’s beer doesn’t go down smoothly, and he clears his throat. “I thought you all didn’t do that. Car bombs. Honor among thieves and all that.” 

“That’s the Italians,” Wade says, the skin of his ruined cheek stretching into another wide, strangely charming smile. “And they do it too, honey, don’t let ‘em fool you.” 

“Maybe they’re better at it.”

Behind Wade, Clint Barton bursts into laughter. 

Wade opens his mouth to defend himself, but the door to the bar opens and Tony Stark strides inside, his face ashen. “Where’s Bucky?” he demands of the room at large. 

Like magic, Barnes appears in the doorway of Peggy’s office, filling the frame. Sam hadn’t even known he’d been there. 

Stark strides across the room, and although he waits until he’s only a few feet from Bucky to speak, he doesn’t bother to lower his voice. “Boss—Frankie just got shot. Outside the St. George. And two men down with him.” 


	5. Chapter 5

Steve’s mother, an army nurse, had passed on to him—either through nature or nurture, it’s impossible to pick them apart—the ability to keep a cool head even in the midst of chaos. So when he walks out of the St. George behind Frankie Muldoon and the shooting starts, he isn’t shaken. He ducks back into the lobby, out of sight, but keeps his eyes on the men with the guns. 

The instant they jump back into the running car and speed off, leaving screaming pedestrians and acrid gunsmoke in their wake, Steve pelts across the pavement to Frankie’s prone form, lying next to two of his bodyguards, both of whom had been killed instantly in the barrage. 

“Rogers,” Frankie sputters. To Steve’s surprise, he’s actually laughing. “My hero.” 

“Shut up,” Steve says, flinging Frankie’s coat open to assess the damage. Which is bad. Very bad. His shoulder is already a mess of blood, there’s a graze along one earlobe, and a sinister circular hole on the left side of his chest, just beneath his heart. 

“Call an ambulance,” Steve shouts to one of the St. George’s doormen, and he starts ripping off pieces of Frankie’s elegant, ruined suit jacket to use as bandages, balling up his own coat and sliding it beneath Frankie’s head. 

“Paulie? Mike?” Frankie asks, and Steve just shakes his head. 

“They’re gone,” he says flatly. “And I said shut up.” 

Frankie laughs again, a harsh hack that brings blood with it. “Barnes always does like’em—" But however Bucky always likes them, Steve doesn’t find out, because Frankie Muldoon’s body spasms with more hard coughing. 

Steve loses track of time, keeping pressure on the chest wound, then the shoulder, stopping only to glance around for the ambulance. He doesn’t have time to panic, doesn’t even feel afraid, his focus narrowed to the tiny universe of Frankie Muldoon’s blood, and keeping as much of it as possible inside his body. 

And then he feels a hand on his shoulder. “We got it from here, kid.” Steve stands up, staggering a little, and two hospital orderlies bustle in close to Muldoon, easing him onto a waiting stretcher. 

Then, suddenly, Bucky is there, wrapping an arm around him to pull him aside, and it’s like the whole architecture of Steve’s world changes. Bucky is there, strong and solid, and all the fear-induced weakness that had been held at bay by purpose floods back, like blood returning to a sleeping limb. 

“He gonna make it?” Bucky asks the two hospital orderlies. 

“Your guess is as good as mine, buddy,” one of the men says. “Seen worse.” 

“Seen better, too,” the other orderly chimes in, unhelpfully. Bucky shoulders him out of the way, leaning over Frankie. 

“Barnes,” Frankie rasps, weakly. “Barnes…” 

“Yeah, boss. I’m right here.” 

“You know what to do?” 

“You want _me_ to—" 

“Who the fuck else?” Frankie asks, and his obvious irritation is oddly consoling. “You handle this, Barnes. Handle it.” He pokes Bucky in the chest once for emphasis, and then he’s being hefted up into the back of the ambulance. 

Bucky turns to Steve, and pulls him close, almost crushing him against his chest. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “Jesus Christ, Stevie.”

“I’m fine,” Steve says, shoving away from Bucky, but not hard. “Bucky, Jesus, I’m fine, let me go.” 

“Did you see it?” Bucky only half releases him, holding him at arm’s length and looking him up and down. “You’ve got blood all over you.” 

Steve sighs and runs a hand over his head, leaving a faint rusty streak in his straw-colored hair. “Yes,” he says. “I saw everything.” 

*

Steve picks fights the whole way to Bucky’s place, and on some level, he’s aware that it’s because he’s scared, and angry, and disappointed in himself. He knows he’s not making any sense, and that Bucky is right, but he can’t seem to stop himself, to check his ornery tongue. 

“If they’d wanted to kill me, they could’ve just done it then,” he says. 

“Right,” Bucky replies drily. “Like nobody ever botches a job and has to clean up the witnesses later.” 

“They don’t know who I am,” Steve adds. “I’m not part of this.” 

“You are now. If they want to find you, they’ll find you. Think about it, Stevie. They ask at the hotel, they get your name, and then it’s only a day, tops, before they find your place. They could have somebody waiting for you there right now.” 

Steve can feel the blood draining from his face. “Would they do that?” 

“It’s what I would do.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah, ‘oh.’ So you’re not going back there until we get this figured out.” 

Steve swallows hard over the lump that’s suddenly risen in his throat. “How do we figure it out?” 

Bucky turns to look at him. “You have that little sketchbook with you?” Steve nods. “You’re gonna draw it for me. The guys who did it, everything you can remember.” 

Steve looks down, watches his feet move along the pavement. “And then what? You find them? And kill them?” 

Bucky stops walking and catches Steve’s arm. “Yeah, then we kill them. So they don’t kill you. So they don’t come after me next, and Clint, and Wade, and everybody the fuck else. That’s how this works, Steve. Look at what just happened. That’s a declaration of war, plain and simple.” 

“Or maybe he was a violent man who did violent things, and it finally caught up with him.” 

Bucky turns to him, jaw tightening. “And you think I should just stand by and let it catch up with the rest of us? Like it’s catching up to you?” 

“Whose fault is that?” Steve snaps, yanking futilely on his arm. “I didn’t want any part of this and you—you—" 

Bucky drags him roughly up the steps to his apartment, ignoring his outrage. As soon as they’re inside, he locks the door and pulls him close, holding him uncomfortably tight against his strong, soft body. “I thought they got you,” he says, his voice gentle in a way it hasn’t been for years. “I thought you were dead. Thought that was your blood on the sidewalk.” 

“I’m fine,” Steve says, and the fight goes out of him almost instantly. He wishes that he wanted to push away, but he doesn’t. He knows he should. He knows it. And he can’t. He balls his hands into fists, rests them against Bucky’s chest, but he wants Bucky, wants him close. 

Hesitantly, he wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist. 

Bucky stops breathing. 

“I’m fine,” Steve says again. “I’m fine.” He knows he’s saying it to himself as much as to Bucky, trying to override the fear. He clings a little tighter. 

Despite himself, he starts to feel better, small and safe, holding onto Bucky, who’s so solid, his big body warm and softer than it’s ever been, the round swell of his belly against Steve’s chest, the padded softness of his arms around Steve’s shoulders. Steve remembers, suddenly, holding onto Bucky on top of a table before the war, his belly flat, his waist narrow in his smart jacket. Bucky feels so different now, but he still feels like home. 

“You’re gonna get blood on me,” Bucky says, pushing him away and touching two fingers to Steve’s shirt, where Frankie Muldoon’s blood is smeared, red and still slightly damp. “You should get this off.” He heads for the kitchen, returns with a damp rag. 

Steve shucks out of his shirt and lets it fall on the floor, and Bucky touches the cloth to his face, then wipes at his chest, his arms, his hands. Steve just stands there and takes it, like a child. 

“That’s better,” Bucky murmurs, still standing close. 

“Thanks.” 

“You can borrow one of my shirts.” 

“It’ll be too big,” Steve says, reddening, because Bucky’s shirts would always have been too big, but now it will be especially so, and the thought is strangely electrifying. 

“Yeah, it will,” Bucky says. “But I got some that are too small for me, those won’t be so bad.” He runs a hand over his belly, drawing Steve’s attention to the fact that the shirt he’s wearing right now is very nearly too small, the buttons tight across the middle. 

“All your shirts are too small for you,” Steve says, blushing harder. 

“Yeah, well.” Bucky looks, to Steve’s surprise, a little abashed about that. “Maybe I’ll get some new ones.” 

Steve’s mouth seems to have become disconnected from his brain. “You’ll grow out of those, too, the way you’re going,” he says, reaching out one hand and resting it lightly on the swell of Bucky’s belly, which is warm, so warm he can feel it through the thin fabric of the shirt. He drops his hand quickly, like he’d just touched something burning hot, and takes a full step backward, wondering what the hell he’d been thinking. 

And then he’s in Bucky’s arms, and Bucky is kissing him, and they’re close together, so close, Steve stepping on Bucky’s toes, his legs not even really holding him up any more. 

Steve moves, very slightly, against the softness of Bucky’s body, wanting more. He can feel Bucky’s heart, the deep, resonant bump of it, beating through the muscular wall of Bucky’s chest. He can feel his own heart, threadier, but tripping fast against his ribs. He knows he shouldn’t want Bucky. He knows he should let go, let his heart slow and cool, let this moment pass. He knows that Bucky’s hands, holding him so gently right now, are still scarred across the knuckles from his bloody, violent work. 

He knows that he just doesn’t care, not right now. 

So when Bucky kisses him, leaning down and pressing his lips hard to Steve’s, he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t fight it, and when Bucky lifts him up and sweeps him over to the sofa, lies down on top of him, hiking one of his legs up around his hip, Steve squirms closer, struggling only for more contact, more of Bucky’s body touching his, more of all of it. 

“Bucky,” he gasps, “Oh, god, Bucky, oh god.” 

“Shut up,” Bucky grumbles, ripping open the front of Steve’s shirt, putting warm hands on bare skin. “Stop talking and fucking kiss me.” 

Steve does; he kisses Bucky’s soft mouth, bites at his throat, tugs his shirt free from the waist of his trousers and slides cold hands up his belly and chest, learning the new topography there. Bucky’s chest feels wider, and his belly rounds forward, filling the space between their bodies, heavy and soft, giving where Steve touches him. 

Bucky slides one thick thigh between Steve’s legs, and Steve ruts against it shamelessly, desperate for the friction, the hard contact so pleasurable he almost can’t stand it. 

“Fuck it,” Bucky says, leaning back and pulling Steve up after him. “Bedroom.” 

Deprived of the aching pleasure of Bucky’s thigh between his legs, all Steve can do is nod. He stands up unsteadily, clutching Bucky’s arm. 

And then a knock sounds at the door. They both freeze. 

Bucky holds a finger to his lips, and motions for Steve to stay behind the sofa. He pulls a gun from a drawer in a side table, checks the barrel, and moves silently toward the door. 

“Who is it?” Bucky calls. 

“It’s Wade. And Tony, and Clint. Can we come in, please, before someone starts taking pot shots? We need to talk.” 

*

Bucky sighs, shoving his hair back from his forehead and shoving the gun in the back of his waistband. He’s glad his crew is here—really, he is, you couldn’t ask for a better group of guys—but goddamn, do they got a bad sense of timing. 

“Hang on,” he says toward the door, and then turns to Steve. “Put your shirt on, baby.” 

Steve, predictably, looks pissed, all the sweet-soft-gentle in his expression that Bucky had been coaxing out of him a few moments ago rapidly disappearing from his pretty little face. “I’m not your baby,” he mumbles, dutifully reaching for his shirt. 

“You were about thirty seconds ago,” Bucky fires back, because sometimes you have to call Steve on his bullshit. “And don’t put that thing back on, honey. It’s ruined. Let me find you one.” 

He leaves Steve standing there, managing to look righteously indignant even though he’s shirtless, and his hair is rumpled, and his pretty pink lips are swollen. God, fuckin’ Stevie. 

He finds a button-up in the back of his closet that hasn’t fit him for at least a year. It had gotten too tight everywhere, his shoulders, his chest, his embarrassingly swelling belly. He looks at it now, and it seems almost comically small—probably because he’s even bigger. He glances ruefully down at his gut, which is straining the buttons of his current shirt, and Steve’s voice echoes in his head: _All your shirts are too small for you._ It should probably make him feel ashamed, and it does, a little. He’s not stupid, and he knows he keeps getting fatter, even if no one but Steve—and Frankie, that wily old fuck—will tell him. 

But he likes it, kind of. Likes the way it feels to have all that weight behind him in a fight, even if it makes him slower. What the fuck does he care about slow, these days? The gun tucked in his waistband, the crew standing outside his door, the deference he gets from everyone on the street—it means he doesn’t have to be a scrapper in a back alley anymore. He can be big now, powerful and deliberate, a lion instead of a lynx. 

Besides, it gets Steve’s panties in a fucking bunch, and Bucky always, always likes to have Steve’s number. 

“Here, honey,” he says, emphasizing the pet name as he tosses Steve the shirt. In Steve’s hands, it suddenly looks huge again. 

Steve scowls, but pulls it on and plops down on the sofa, and Bucky opens the door. 

“Looks like you just got promoted, boss,” Wade says as the three of them step inside, looking rattled and excited and shifty, all three of them, like predators smelling blood. 

/“Shut it, Wilson. Frankie ain’t dead yet.” 

“Probably retired, though, even if he ain’t,” Clint says, looking Bucky in the eye. 

It’s true, but now isn’t the time to talk about it. 

“What’re they putting on the streets?” he asks, ignoring Barton. “Was it Italian?”

“Nope,” Tony says, drawling the word out. “Word is it’s internal. McDermott.” 

Bucky doesn’t let himself react; he knows, with the unerring instinct of a leader and a killer, that he has these men’s trust, but he also knows that in order to keep it he can’t show weakness. “Fucking Mickey,” he says, whistling low. 

“He’s been pissed since you’ve been Frankie’s second,” Wade says, settling down on the couch next to Steve, who doesn’t look particularly pleased to see him. “Wanted a bigger slice of the pie after Frankie got the shake on all those new bars.”

The thing is, Bucky’s never officially been named Frankie’s second. He runs his crew and answers directly to Frankie, same as a few other guys do—including McDermott. But Bucky remembers Frankie’s words tonight—“who fucking else?”—and knows that it’s true, no matter what had or had not been made official before. 

_Fuck._. Going to war with the Italians would have been bad—it’s the kind of war they couldn’t have won, not really, and Bucky would have fired back hard and then gone to the table and struck a deal to make peace—but an internal conflict was worse. 

“What are we gonna do, boss?” Tony’s still standing by the door, looking too amped up to sit down. 

Bucky blinks, shifting his body away from Steve. “Take them all out. Mickey and his whole crew.”

*

The next few days are a blur, and Steve can’t quite believe that Bucky really isn’t allowing him to go home—or that he’s allowing Bucky to tell him what to do. Honestly, though, he doesn’t think he _could_ go home. The one time he’d made a semi-serious break for the door, Bucky had physically restrained him, pushing him to the sofa with a weary, “Sit your ass down,” that had made Steve feel furious and safe and aroused all at once. 

Bucky comes and goes at all hours, and when he’s not at the apartment, he leaves one of his men behind to guard the door. When it’s Tony, Steve is treated to running commentary about anything and everything. He delivers long monologues with seeming little concern for whether or not his captive audience is interested. Tony opines on the state of leadership in the Irish mob—Frankie is a legend, but it’s no shame to see him retire, if he pulls through this thing; his own status as an Italian transplant into an Irish crew—it’s all in who you marry, apparently, and his wife, Pepper, was born in County Cork; and the weather—it’s been cold this fall, and he figures it will be a shit winter. It’s overwhelming, listening to Tony’s constant barrage of information, and Steve vastly prefers it when Barton is the one who gets left behind, as he rarely has much to say beyond a terse hello. 

“Staying here ain’t so bad, is it?” Bucky says, when Steve complains that he wants to go home. “Like before the war, yeah?” He doesn’t mention the time that they lived together after the war, when he drank and fought and screamed in his sleep. 

“Before the war I was allowed to leave the apartment,” Steve complains, because he can’t help it. 

Bucky pushes his hair back from his face and sighs. “I’m working on it, Stevie. I’ll get it fixed, all right?”

He looks stressed, sitting at his kitchen table, working his way through plate after plate of lasagna. Tony had brought it over, courtesy of his Irish wife. Apparently upon marrying her, Tony had joined the Irish mob and she’d learned how to make lasagna. It’s a cultural exchange that Steve would find rather sweet, if Tony weren’t a murderer who talked too much. 

He pushes the food on his own plate around, taking a few bites here and there for show. He’s not that hungry. Bucky, though—Bucky looks like he’s starving, and by the time Bucky takes his third serving, an enormous slice of pasta and noodles and meat and cheese that covers his entire plate, Steve doesn’t even try to pretend he’s not just staring. 

“Oof,” Bucky says quietly, after swallowing down a particularly large bite. The buttons of his vest are pulled tight, tight enough that Steve thinks if Bucky tried to lean forward and touch his toes—which Steve’s fairly certain Bucky couldn’t even accomplish, as stuffed as he looks right now—that the buttons might pop off completely. 

“Full?” Steve asks, because it seems like he should say something, and because he wants, desperately and painfully, to hear Bucky talk about what he’s doing when he’s stuffing himself like this. 

“Nah, just”—Bucky pauses, reaching down and flicking open the buttons on his vest. His gut pools forward immediately, pushing the flaps of his vest apart. “There. That’s better.”

Steve stares at Bucky’s stomach. “Is it? That shirt’s too tight, too.”

Bucky looks down at his own belly and runs one strong hand across his very stressed buttons. “You sure do notice things like that, pal,” he says, peering up slyly at Steve. 

“You look like you’re gonna pop most of the time. How could I not?” It sounds mean, but it’s not, that’s not how Steve means it, not really. And Bucky—goddamn him—seems to know it. 

“Here, let me fix it so you don’t worry about me,” Bucky says, grinning so that his chubby cheeks puff up and his dimples show. He looks like a choirboy and a killer all at once, so devastatingly handsome that Steve wants to scream. Before he can, though, Bucky plucks loose all of his shirt buttons and untucks it from his tight waistband, sliding it off his shoulders until he’s sitting across from Steve in nothing but his white undershirt, pulled so tight across his swollen tummy that Steve can clearly see the shadow of his navel. It’s almost too much to look at him, his broad shoulders and pudgy chest, the soft thickness of his biceps, the faded tattoos on his forearms. He looks fat and strong and achingly, overwhelmingly sexy.

Bucky leans back in his chair and lets his gut swell forward a little more, obscenely round. “That’s better.” He reaches out and lazily shoves his empty plate forward an inch or two. “Cut me one more slice, huh Stevie?”

Steve scowls, partly because he doesn’t want to be treated like Bucky’s little wife, doesn’t want to be dressed up in stockings and taken out dancing like a dame, like Frankie had suggested, and partly because he’s already standing up, grabbing the plate and cutting an enormous, obscene slice of lasagna. 

“You’re getting fat, Buck,” he says, thinking maybe if he’s blunt and a little mean his heart will stop crashing in his chest. 

It doesn’t work. 

“I know, pal.” By the time Bucky finishes that final plate, almost panting at the last few bites, smothering hiccups behind his hand and squirming in his chair like it _hurts_ , like he’s miserable with the weight of his own gluttony, Steve thinks he would die if Bucky touched him like he had the night Frankie got shot. 

He doesn’t, though, and instead of going to bed with him, Bucky has to leave, headed out to do whatever it is he does when he disappears into the darkest parts of the city. 

Steve glares so hard that even Tony Stark gets the hint and shuts up. 

Before Steve finally falls asleep that night, he jerks himself off roughly, thinking of Bucky's swollen gut and his shameless hedonism, imagining what it might have been like if Bucky had stayed home, shoved another plate of lasagna down his greedy throat and been truly too full to get up, if he'd had to command Steve to climb into what was left of his lap and ride him. He comes quick and hard, one hand clasped over his mouth, before he falls into an uneasy sleep, the images of Bucky, fat and undone beneath him, replaced with unwelcome dreams of Bucky's thick body sprawled on the sidewalk, gunned down just like Frankie Muldoon had been. 

*

Sometimes Angie just has to stop and look at her girlfriend, she has to take a few seconds and admire the crazy, stubborn, reckless woman she loves. 

It’s overwhelming, how Angie feels about her, about her fearlessness, about the way she robs from Bucky without a second thought, and takes ridiculously long odds on horses that shouldn’t be winners, and pours beers for lonely hearts and murderers alike, and listens to all of them with a sympathetic ear. People _like_ Peggy, they’re as drawn to her magnetism as Angie herself is, and sometimes it nearly drives her crazy with pride and jealousy at once. 

Tonight, for instance, Peggy’s leaned casually over the bar, full breasts spilling out of the top of her blouse, in a heated discussion with Sam Wilson. Natasha has the stool next to Sam, and Angie’s certain she’s looking down Peggy’s shirt right now—Angie would be, if the situations were reversed. She can’t fault Natasha for that, but she doesn’t love her for it, either. 

Angie makes her way behind the bar and drapes a hand around Peggy’s waist—not at all to mark her territory, of course, but just to take a polite interest in the conversation. 

“—and so I take it everything’s still a mess with Frankie?” Angie catches the second half of Sam’s sentence, but she can guess what the rest of it covered. The mood at the Off, among anyone in the know, has been tense since Frankie was shot. Wade and Clint and Tony don’t sit at the bar, like they did before, and Bucky hasn’t done more than cursorily glance at the till. Mostly, he and his men appear and disappear throughout the evening, and if they’re in the bar, they’re typically barricaded in Peggy’s office, which she no longer thinks of as being even remotely her own. 

Steve, who’s sitting a few stools down, picks his head up, and Angie watches him out of the corner of his eye, the way his throat contracts, the way his whole body tenses. He might as well be wearing a sign that reads _I’m In Love With Bucky Barnes_. Poor fool. 

Peggy nods, pushing her ass back against Angie’s hip, a little discreet and a little slutty. “It was Jamie McDermott, that’s the rumor.” She lowers her voice a little. “And no one’s seen him on the street since it happened.”

“Because he is going to die,” Natasha contributes helpfully, her accent sounding a little thicker than usual. “And he knows it.”

Sam turns to look at her. “You got a lot of confidence in Barnes and his crew, huh?” 

She shrugs, looking annoyingly sexy. “He’s a powerful man. He lets this happen? He loses that power.” She’s silent for a moment, fishing the cherry out of her cocktail and popping it between her lips in a way that should be ridiculous—too practiced and self-aware to ever be sexy—but isn’t. “Besides, if he doesn’t kill them all, they’ll kill him and every one of his little thugs.” She glances over at Sam. “Including your boyfriend.”

Sam ducks his head. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Four pairs of eyes swivel in Sam’s direction. “He’s _not_. I’m 31 fucking years old. I don’t have boyfriends.”

“Uh huh. Whatever you say, Sammy,” Peggy says, her voice a warm, throaty singsong that makes Angie want to snap her hips, shove her thigh between Peggy’s legs from where she’s standing behind her. “He walk you home lately?”

“No,” Sam says flatly. “I haven’t seen him in days.”

At that moment, like Wade had heard Sam and decided to rectify the situation, the door to Peggy’s office opens and the entire crew spills out, Bucky in the lead, flanked by Tony, Wade, and Clint.

Bucky strides across the bar and walks directly up to Steve. “I’ve got business. Don’t fuckin’ leave till I’m back.” Steve starts to protest, and Bucky claps a hand on his shoulder. “I fuckin’ mean it, Stevie. Stay here.” He glances over his shoulder at Wilson, who’s standing at the edge of the bar, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. “Wade’ll be here. Tony and Clint and I have to go out.” He leans closer to Steve, and Angie can’t make out what he says, but Steve’s jaw clenches. 

“A few hours, honey. That’s it, and it’s all over,” Bucky says, louder, and then stands up, squaring his enormous shoulders and pulling his trench coat closed over his broad belly. He glances at Peggy on his way out the door. “Light hand on the drinks tonight, doll, all right?”

Before she can answer, he strides out the door, Tony and Clint behind him.

Wade glances down the bar, locking eyes with Sam for just a moment. Usually when he’s at the Off he sidles over, sits down next to Sam and flirts shamelessly, wild and dangerous and apparently catnip for Sam. Tonight, though, he just whirls on his heel and posts himself up at the front door, a scarred and frightening gargoyle inexplicably guarding the Off like it’s the Notre Dame. 

No one says anything for a moment, tension hanging over the bar like a tangible thing, until Steve clears his throat and pushes his glass of seltzer water forward. “Whiskey, Peggy. Would you get me one? Please?”

**Author's Note:**

> Your comments really do mean the world to me, and I cannot overstate how much they fuel my desire to keep writing. Catch me on tumblr at [missjanedoeeyes](http://missjanedoeeyes.tumblr.com), where I'm probably screaming about something ridiculous and kinky.


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